Robodebt fallout: Albanese regards Kathryn Campbell's suspension without pay as 'an appropriate response'

The Prime Minister has confirmed The Canberra Times' revelation on Thursday that Ms Campbell was involuntarily stood down from her $900,000 a year senior AUKUS advisory role within the Department of Defence last Monday.

The suspension without pay from the position she has been in since July 2022 makes the former Human Services secretary the first senior head to roll after the damning robodebt royal commission's findings.

Mr Albanese said the move to stand down Ms Campbell was a decision made by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and what he called "appropriate bodies".

"It's not appropriate given the potential legal matters that are involved to go through all of the detail there, but certainly there's been an appropriate response from my department and from the public service to the royal commission findings," he told ABC Melbourne.

Just who is in the sealed section of the report where recommendations for referral to criminal and civil action is not known, but the former departmental head was among more than seven public servants adversely named in the robodebt report.

The Canberra Times does not suggest Ms Campbell is one of those included in the sealed section.

The independent member for Curtin Kate Chaney says Ms Campbell's suspension "is a start", but public sector reform is a priority.

"After being 'responsible for a department that had established, implemented and maintained an unlawful program', suspension of Kathryn Campbell is a start," she tweeted.

"But the cultural issue goes much deeper than individuals. Public sector reform must be a priority of this govt."

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The Greens have also welcomed Ms Campbell's suspension.

"The harm and trauma and deaths could have been avoided if not for the inhumane actions and lack of accountability from former-Prime Minister Morrison on down, including senior departmental officials like Ms Campbell," Senator Janet Rice said in a statement.

"Ms Campbell's suspension is a welcome step towards accountability. But it shouldn't end there - all those responsible for this brutal and illegal scheme, including Scott Morrison, must be held to account, too.

"The Greens also want to see an immediate suspension of all debt collection, which Labor ramped up weeks after getting into power."

Commissioner Catherine Holmes found Ms Campbell, on the weight of evidence, gave misleading advice to federal cabinet.

"Ms Campbell had been responsible for a department that had established, implemented and maintained an unlawful program. When exposed to information that brought to light the illegality of income averaging, she did nothing of substance. When presented with opportunities to obtain advice on the lawfulness of that practice, she failed to act," Commissioner Holmes wrote.

Ms Campbell had been parachuted into the "special adviser" role by the government's most senior bureaucrats in the weeks leading up to her sacking as secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in June 2022.

The Department of Defence did not respond to questions regarding her ongoing employment status, or what role she had been in prior to being suspended.

Asked by host Virginia Trioli how long Ms Campbell's suspension is for and will it turn into a full dismissal, the Prime Minister spoke broadly.

"Well, I'm not going to go into those details because individuals do have rights as well and will go through appropriate processes," he said.

"One of the things the royal commission was about was making sure we have proper processes so we don't have the sort of governance arrangements, whether it be some of the actions of the public service but more particularly as well the actions of government ministers from the time that robodebt was introduced, and then kept going for four and a half years in spite of the fact that it was an illegal scheme."

"We will respond in an orderly appropriate way. Learning the lessons from the robodebt royal commission, which the findings of which were, I think, even more damning than anyone was expecting."

Former prime minister Scott Morrison has rejected the "unsubstantiated" findings against him, saying the royal commission had fundamentally misunderstood government processes.

As social services minister, Mr Morrison was the cabinet minister who brought the robodebt proposal to cabinet.

Commissioner Holmes marked Mr Morrison for "misleading" cabinet over the legality of the scheme while he was social services minister. He was also found to have "failed to meet his ministerial responsibility" by rushing through the proposal.

As the cabinet minister who brought the robodebt proposal to cabinet, Morrison said he had "acted in good faith and on clear and deliberate department advice that no legislation was required to introduce the scheme."