Not since the banking royal commission has there been such a parade of shameless liars than the politicians and public servants trying to persuade the adults in the room that they didn’t know the Robodebt scam was illegal, and pursued entirely as an ideological punishment of the poor, for the crime of poverty.
Worse than the risible denials at the Robodebt hearings, though, is the underlying zeal with which public servants pursued an ideologically conceived, state imposed persecution of the very people they are paid to serve.
We have long become inured to state-imposed idolization of profit as an end in itself, and state sponsored coercion to subject ourselves to lives governed by wage slavery and consumption addiction whose benefits flow principally to corporations and already wealthy individuals.
An example of the subordination of all social and individual striving to state sponsored ideology so entrenched we think of it as normal. As if there were no alternatives. But we need only look to indigenous ambitions to recognize that alternatives do exist, and we rush to frustrate them.
Robodebt, accompanied by the cashless welfare card, however, makes it clear that it isn’t just politicians who drive ideological agenda. It turns out that public servants at all levels were willing to turn the very rubric ‘public servant’ into a menacing tautology: more like ideological police. Becoming arrogantly indifferent to the notion of serving a public rather than merely enforcing ‘compliance’ and perversely enjoying exercising what power they have to the detriment of people with no power at all.
You have to wonder whether bureaucrats would have shied away from a political instruction to force people to assemble at central points, where they would be forced onto cattle cars and railed off to remote locations … to labour as fruit and vegetable pickers, or for some other purpose. Too far-fetched? We didn’t flinch at outsourced agencies forcing hundreds of thousands into the treadmill labour of work for the dole, justified by ideological rhetoric that boiled down to nothing much more sophisticated than Arbeit Macht Frei with zero positive employment outcomes.
It isn’t just Robodebt or social security. Try renewing your driver license, lodging a passport application, dealing with state or federal consumer affairs bureaucracies, or disputing a tax ruling. In all of those endeavours, you will encounter an intransigence now that illustrates a distrust of the public, a hostility to it, and an unhealthy obsession with the savage abuse of power.
What was the bourgeois response? You know, the people often called latte drinking left urban elites by Murdoch media finger puppets. Nothing is what they did. Because it didn’t happen to them. And because no one really believed the victims about the extent of the abuses.
The ALP was conspicuously silent too, acting only if and when there was political capital to be made.
Back to Robodebt. Can you imagine if there had been some wildly successful policy, and an inquiry into this success had spawned a single politician or public servant not rushing to declare their pivotal rôle in that success? With Robodebt we have the complete opposite.
So much so that the denials about the illegality and rejection of responsibility are so uniform you have to suppose we are witnessing a deliberate, calculated strategy of dishonesty. Based on the guilty knowledge of culpability in inhuman crimes. ‘I was only following orders’ all around.
Worst of all, enough people voted for this disgraceful abrogation of democratic values … more than once.
Robodebt is proof positive that fascism exists at all layers of government, including the public service, and the longevity of the programme proves it exists among a substantial proportion of the electorate.
Will anyone be prosecuted and gaoled for their crimes? Was anyone prosecuted and gaoled after the banking royal commission found evidence of systematic criminal fraud and malfeasance? And that proves fascism is also alive and well in our legal system, from the judiciary through to police, any and all of whom should have sworn out complaints and/or brought charges immediately upon becoming aware of criminal misconduct.
Let’s see how the ALP will respond to the Robodebt inquiry. My bet is that nothing will come of it, and no consequences will accrue to anyone involved. Because, it seems, even the ALP is comfortable with our contemporary bourgeois fascism.
In the meantime, the bourgeoisie reserves its confected outrage and impotent anger for inflationary pressure on its mortgages and credit-fuelled lifestyles. Never once questioning why the state is able to enforce profit as a national priority outweighing all others, and turning a blind eye to corporate price gouging and obscene profiteering.
Never once admitting to itself that Australia’s real ‘leaders’ are never elected, but tell our MPs what the limits are to their powers to make laws and govern the country, and seem to have the power to make that stick.
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