The notes included references to the term “ welfare cop” - Morrison spoke in the media about a "strong welfare cop on the beat". Labor has joined the Greens' call for a royal commission into "robodebt" - an unlawful Morrison Government debt recovery scheme.Įvidence put to the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme included Pratt’s handwritten notes of the fateful Morrison meeting. A new DSS minister, Scott Morrison, had been appointed by Malcolm Turnbull.Īccording to Annika Smethurst’s biographical account of Morrison’s political rise in her book The Accidental Prime Minister, social services was a portfolio Morrison was determined to use to boost his prospects for an office more aligned with his ambitions. Returning to his office as secretary of the Department of Social Services ( DSS) after the Christmas break in January 2015, Pratt was about to be handed another poisoned chalice. It created a minefield and Pratt did a serviceable job in helping to steer a path that minimised detonations until the Howard Government was despatched to history by voters in 2007. Robodebt was a massive failure of public policy that might not have proceeded if those who helped enable it had pushed back on a questionable scheme they knew had significant flaws, writes Paul Begley.įINN PRATT knows what it’s like to be handed a poisoned chalice.Īlong with the late John Kovacic and other senior public servants, Pratt was a deputy secretary in the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations during the heady days of John Howard’s Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005'.
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