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Operation Myrtleford investigation report

Investigation Report · National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) · Commonwealth · No report date recorded

Findings, opinions and statements
6
Report length
445 pages

Official source

Operation Myrtleford investigation report

PDF · 445 pages · 7.2 MB · nacc.gov.au

Summary

The report's own summary: Executive summary, pages 5 to 8

Generated summary: written by an AI model from the report text and checked against the cited pages.

  • The National Anti-Corruption Commission investigated corruption issues concerning six people referred by the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme.

    Report, page 5

  • It examined the scheme’s budget approval, responses to the Ombudsman and operational problems, and concerns about lawfulness, focusing on events in 2015, 2017 and 2018.

    Report, page 6

  • The Commission found two people engaged in serious corrupt conduct by intentionally misleading Social Services officials during the 2015 budget process and the Ombudsman during the 2017 investigation.

    Report, page 6 · Report, page 7

  • The Commission concluded that the other four referred people had not engaged in corrupt conduct.

    Report, page 6

  • The Commission concluded that insufficient admissible evidence was available for criminal referrals concerning the two people against whom it made corruption findings.

    Report, page 7

  • It made no recommendations because it considered existing reforms to budget processes and responses to the Ombudsman sufficient to prevent similar conduct.

    Report, page 7 · Report, page 8 · Report, page 437

Findings, opinions and statements 6

Allegations are not findings. A commission's finding or opinion of corrupt conduct or misconduct is not a finding that a person is guilty of a criminal offence, and the commissions say so in their reports.

  1. Determination

    Finding

    With respect to the referral made by the Royal Commission in relation to Mr Withnell, I am satisfied that Mr Withnell engaged in corrupt conduct because at all relevant times, Mr Withnell knew and intended that automatic default averaging would be central to OCI, and I am satisfied that, by representing to Mr Kimber and Mr McBride that OCI would not involve averaging, Mr Withnell engaged in deliberate conduct that was designed to mislead Mr Kimber and Mr McBride, and, through them, DSS. This amounted to corrupt conduct within the meaning of section 8(1)(a) and further or alternatively section 8(1)(b) of the NACC Act.

    Report, page 440, Determination

  2. Determination

    Finding

    With respect to the referral made by the Royal Commission in relation to Ms Wilson, I am satisfied that Ms Wilson engaged in corrupt conduct by intentionally misleading, or attempting to mislead, the Ombudsman. Ms Wilson’s conduct in so misleading or attempting to mislead the Ombudsman amounted to dishonest performance by Ms Wilson of her official functions or duties as a public official and further, or alternatively, the dishonest exercise of her official functions or duties as a public official for the improper purpose of misleading the Ombudsman, and therefore was corrupt conduct within the meaning of section 8(1)(a) and further, or alternatively, section 8(1)(b) of the NACC Act.

    Report, page 440, Determination

  3. Determination

    No finding

    With respect to the referral made by the Royal Commission in relation to Ms Halbert, I am satisfied that Ms Halbert did not engage in corrupt conduct.

    Report, page 440, Determination

  4. Determination

    No finding

    With respect the referral made by the Royal Commission in relation to Ms Musolino, I am satisfied that Ms Musolino did not engage in corrupt conduct.

    Report, page 440, Determination

  5. Determination

    No finding

    With respect to the referral made by the Royal Commission in relation to Ms Campbell, I am satisfied that Ms Campbell did not engage in corrupt conduct.

    Report, page 440, Determination

  6. Determination

    No finding

    With respect to the referral made by the Royal Commission in relation to Mr Morrison, I am satisfied that Mr Morrison did not engage in corrupt conduct.

    Report, page 440, Determination

Recommendations

The report states that it makes no recommendations.

Published responses

Responses to this report have not been checked.

Official documents 1

About the report

Period
March 2026. The NACC's file path for the report is /documents/2026-03/; the report itself carries no date.
How OPAX got it
manual publisher download supplied by the OPAX maintainer, 11 Nov 2026
Rights
Copyright Commonwealth of Australia; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, except the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, the Commission's logo, third-party material, trade marks and images (report page 2).

Notes on this record

  • Source document supplied as a manual publisher download supplied by the OPAX maintainer, 11 Nov 2026, from the publisher URL cited.
  • The report states that the Commission has not made recommendations in this report (page 8).
  • No signature date was found in the report text, so the record is undated.

Coverage

This publisher

  • www.nacc.gov.au gave the identifying OPAXBot agent no response on 11 November 2026 (HTTP/1.1 timeouts, HTTP/2 stream resets), so its investigation reports and statements are not collected automatically.
  • Eight investigation reports are included from a manual publisher download supplied by the OPAX maintainer on 11 November 2026 (cited to their nacc.gov.au URLs). Later reports and NACC statements are not included.
  • webarchive.nla.gov.au answered the identifying agent with HTTP 403, so the official archive copy is not used either.

Record snapshot: · This record as JSON