Australian Government lawyers: lessons from Robodebt

In 2016, the Australian Government started the Online Compliance Intervention scheme, now known as ‘Robodebt’, to recover alleged debts from welfare recipients. Robodebt was unlawful, but it ran for several years before its illegality was confirmed by the Federal Court in 2019. The Royal Commission set up to inquire into the scheme heard evidence from multiple government lawyers. While Government lawyers are sometimes overlooked in legal ethics literature (once described as the ‘orphans of legal ethics’)Footnote1, the Commission’s findings have put the role of these lawyers in the spotlight. In this article, I first review existing research on government lawyers, exploring the role and duties of these lawyers. I then consider the actions of two lawyers involved in the Robodebt Scheme, who worked at different levels of the Australian Public Service hierarchy. Each was subject to particular pressures and each, it seems, breached their professional duties. Finally, I discuss the contextual and structural factors that contributed to professional ethical failures and consider ways of supporting ethical government lawyering. I conclude by suggesting that the question of which organisational structures best facilitate ethical government lawyering should remain under discussion, as should development of a code of conduct for government lawyers.