By coincidence, it appears that the Ombudsman’s Office is being questioned at the Robodebt Royal Commission. The line of questioning apparently implying that their opinion might have been skewed.
‘I have no idea what the current reputation of the OO may be.
spokesperson for the Ombudsman said the body regularly sent drafts to agencies for them to make comments on, however, the “form of a published report is a matter for the Ombudsman to decide.”
Appearing before former Queensland Supreme Court justice Catherine Holmes in Brisbane, McNamara was shown correspondence that included DHS proposing rewrites of findings and recommendations in Ombudsman draft reports, including a proposal the watchdog strike out wording that “inaccurate debts” were raised.
“Our legal division didn’t like that at all,” McNamara said. “They didn’t agree with it as a matter of law that it was an inaccurate debt, so they didn’t want that in the report.”
The suggested amendments also removed findings that debt notices didn’t provide a clear “warning that using averaged data may result in an incorrect debt”, and inserted language that cast the department in a better light.
It was put to McNamara that extensive negotiation with the Ombudsman’s office took place over the report, to which he replied, “yeah, they were open to change.”
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/f...05-p5c3sd.html