I have been on both sides of this story.
Graduating in the 1970s as an undx autistic woman I completely lacked the skills required to identify & apply for any kind of suitable work. I spent 8 years on dole. None of the help I received was useful & the constant rejection was soul destroying. After a while I decided to see the payments as an arts grant, & pursued deep dives into special interests, meeting likeminded people & having adventures. Eventually I joined the APS via the clerical entrance exam & that environment, with its clear hierarchies & explicit rules, suited me well. I worked across a lifespan of social policy areas & by the time privatisation of government services became a thing was in a role whose job was to make our part of the organisation look as if it was delivering the services we were funded to do while also providing services to commercial clients & running a surplus - all the while keeping our unionised professional staff happy by ensuring minimal change to their work. In practice this meant providing people on benefits with minimal services while recording them as greater than they were, providing lucrative services to our commercial clients & showing most of their payments as profit. This situation was intolerable to me & as I was unable not to name it my time there was colourful. When I returned to policy work it became increasingly clear that our job was to tell the minister what they wanted to hear, bc if the minister didn’t like what they heard from us they’d buy their research & policy advice elsewhere. We would routinely assess tenders for projects that were transparently designed to deliver the desired results. Escaping into a career in research saved my life.
I was completely unsurprised by #RoboDebt. Colleen Taylor is a hero.
In such environments the price of a career is collusion. No wonder autistic folx burn out & leave.
#PublicAdministration #AusPol #unemployment #ActuallyAutistic #ethics