The political cynic could easily imagine a string of reasons for ignoring calls for a royal commission or other inquiry into the robodebt debacle.

The scheme, after all, bears the fingerprints of more than three ministers, including those of the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, from when he was minister for social security, and later when as Treasurer he promised a big crackdown on social security fraud, saving $7 billion, as part of the 2016 election campaign.

The minister presently eating the shit sandwich, Stuart Robert, is Morrison's close personal friend, one of his numbers men, and the person with whom he knelt to pray before his garden of Gethsemane.

Another, Christian Porter, moved to becoming Attorney-General after his period in Social Services, and he and his legal advisers took far too long to see that the legal basis of robodebt was fundamentally flawed. Putting that up for public exposure might invite, as it ought, questions about the calibre of the Attorney-General and would be future prime minister, and about the quality of the general legal advice the government gets, including about the sports rorts affair.

It should be noted that the legal flaws of the robodebt scheme were obvious, other than to the government's legal advisers, from the time that beneficiaries received threatening letters and began screaming blue murder three and a half years ago. The adverse federal court ruling merely confirmed what welfare agencies and other critics had said years before. These included the inherent impossibility of comparing annual income information from tax with fortnightly payments from Centrelink, the reversed onus of proof, and the process that deemed anyone who did not respond to letters guilty of having been overpaid.

In March 2017, long before the class action but while Kathryn Campbell of Human Services was denying any legal problem before Senate committees, I wrote that the adverse publicity had the advantage of helping beneficiaries (almost by definition without much power or legal resources) become aware of their rights.

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"It is by no means clear that only a fifth of those accused, as the government suggests, were innocent of overpayment," I wrote. "Those are the ones who can readily establish themselves as victims of a very dodgy algorithm.

"Many others will not have the records or the capacity to gainsay the agency's assertions, will lack capable advocates or the capacity to counter interpretations of entitlement legislation, or cute departmental pretences that its record represents the complete truth, as known to Centrelink, and that if it is wrong, or deficient, then that is because the client has mis-advised it, or failed to inform it of 'correct' facts.

"My advice to any person against whom a debt has been raised is that they lodge a legal appeal, and have the onus of proof put on the agency. At the very least this will ensure that the claim is reviewed by an administrative lawyer.

"It is simply not good enough to claim, as Campbell has, that 'people have always been responsible for providing the department with correct information', with the implication that if Centrelink, or the computer algorithm, had made a false deduction from the material, it must be the client's fault."

Leaving it to the Federal Court, having fought it all the way, meant that all robodebt claims for alleged overpayment failed. It meant that Morrison's pretence that his scheme could "save" the budget $7 billion over a few years was wrong. It also meant that the basic problems could not be addressed by mere tinkering, which might have been possible. There are voices bravely claiming that there could be a reinvented robodebt in six months time - drawn up so as to address the legal flaws. Perhaps, but if the process is managed by people who couldn't see them before, who thought them unimportant, or who took nine months after the decision to acknowledge that they had messed up, I wouldn't have my hopes up.

There's another problem that any external or independent inquiry might decide to look at. Yet another minister, Alan Tudge, took action against a media critic of the scheme by disclosing her personal details as a welfare recipient. There are times when government hides behind confected privacy claims to avoid being transparent and accountable; here was an instance in which the message sent out was "criticise and give up your privacy". Sadly, in circumstances that would almost certainly be revisited if there were a proper inquiry, the then-privacy commissioner had no problem with the minister's action.

It is true that there is at least one public servant perfectly positioned to be the scapegoat. That would be Kathryn Campbell, presently secretary of Social Services, but at the time robodebt was rolled out, the secretary of the more junior Human Services department. Few of those who recognise what a colossal debacle occurred, and how closely she was involved in the organisation, timing, implementation and review of the scheme, would much mourn her departure. Nor would many of the front-line officers of Centrelink, who had repeatedly warned more senior officers of the disaster in being, and who bore the brunt of the anger, frustration and impotence of hundreds of thousands of people who successfully penetrated the Centrelink telephone system and its hours of waiting for an answer while trying to find out what, if anything, they had done wrong.

Ironically, Campbell has been at times philosophical about the public relations and administrative disaster. She has at times blamed the media, and an overreaction during the "silly season". She has blamed recipients of her agency's letter, and their stupidity in failing to recognise that it was but a plea for discussion, not a threat of debtor's prison. She has even allowed that a lesson from the exercise might be the need for "co-design" and consultation, whether with staff, professional champions of the welfare sector, or - horrors - the public at large. No one has yet noticed any change in her own style.

But Morrison, and other ministers, might well be reluctant to feed Campbell to the wolves. She protected them, after all, and well beyond the call of duty. She argued the almost unarguable - such as that the initiating threatening letter was merely an invitation to treat with departmental officers, not an arbitrary announcement of an overpayment to welfare recipients living week-to-week, requiring the compulsory return of thousands of dollars. She was unmoved, under questioning, about criticism that her scheme involved a requirement that recipients in the firing line prove their innocence of overclaiming rather than that the department prove its case. She resisted admitting the obvious, that she and senior staff had rushed into the scheme not fully prepared because of political pressure. When Tudge was criticised for leaking out details of the beneficiary history of Andie Fox, she was quick to defend him, to reveal a departmental scheme of monitoring and investigating public criticism and agency advice that it was cricket to fight back by attacking the messenger rather than dealing with the message.

Yet a ruthless government under pressure would probably have had little hesitation in throwing Campbell under the bus, had it been necessary. Sure, some might have argued "she did something for us, but what has she done lately?" - and, in any event, her loyalty had been rewarded by promotion to being secretary of Social Services, rather than the head of a subset of that department, at that stage (but no longer) regarded as a separate sub-department.

She had also, no doubt by pure coincidence, received a significant promotion in her secondary job as a senior officer in the Australian Army Reserve. Previously a brigadier in charge of a Reserve division, she is now a major-general. She has said that her military leadership role assists in her bureaucratic leadership role - and vice versa - but some of those familiar with her leadership style say she is more used to command than to listening or consultation, and to demanding, rather than earning, ready obedience. It is true that she had been overlooked - or been regarded as potentially controversial, or perhaps a little toxic - when the powers that be (at that stage primarily Malcolm Turnbull) were canvassing potential secretaries of the Department of Defence.

Ms Campbell, or Major-General Campbell, was in short in a far better position these days than she had been when she was facing fire before Senate committees over robodebt. She had, moreover, become, along with Mike Pezzullo, one of the most powerful of the departmental secretaries, apparently able to dominate more timid secretaries as well as ones on paper far more senior. It was never a surprise that Pezzullo (who himself lusts after Defence and who regards himself as far more eminently qualified than Campbell) had tried to dominate other secretaries, and had, from time to time, lectured secretaries of prime ministers, Treasury and Defence as though they were junior officials. Campbell's style is far more restrained, but many of her colleagues are terrified of her.

Campbell may also be in the running with Pezzullo for the title of agency official associated with the biggest losses caused by administrative failure during her tenure. Pezzullo's management of Home Affairs, and, earlier, Immigration, has been continually criticised by auditors-general, whether over contracts for building and services in our concentration camp system, or for losses occasioned by failed departmental computer acquisitions. In a normal department responsibilities for such debacles might not fall on the person at the top, but the Pezzullo style of management leaves little room for initiative below deck. Some might think the Treasury (or Tax) $60 billion miscalculation should be counted, but, lamentable as it was, it did not involve the actual throwing away of public money.

Heaven knows how the ultimate costs of the robodebt fiasco will pan out. So far the Commonwealth has announced it is paying back about three quarters of a billion to nearly 400,000 people whose rights were trampled upon. But that is merely a repayment of money improperly taken. There is a class action in progress, and as an added bonus, apparently the defence is under the supervision of Christian Porter's department, whose handling of the case has been lamentable. It would be easy to imagine that every person involved could receive $5000 or more in return for being wrongly accused, stuffed about, and in many cases put well out of pocket by peremptory (and as it turns out, illegal) agency actions - and all without the benefit of any apology or so much as a statement of regret, whether from politicians or bureaucrats. If that were to be the sum received after the class-action lawyers have had their whack, it would be an extra $2 billion. It could well be more, given that the agency had been in the process of extending the smashing success of the robodebt system into other areas of welfare payment, including aged pension, student entitlement and disability payments.

Some of the money to be returned should be paid out this financial year, although the greater amount should be in the next financial year. That suggests that the once much-vaunted budget surplus of 2019-20 was already cactus before routine budgeting was upset by fire, coronavirus and unemployment crises. The existence of the debt, once the Federal Court declared the scheme illegal, has been known for nine months, but it was for the government to decide when to crystallise it. It was no surprise that capitulation was announced late on a Friday afternoon, by Stuart Robert on the Gold Coast - the classic public relations attempt to avoid scrutiny. Other ministers involved felt unable to comment much. From the Prime Minister down they have been studiously "looking ahead, not backwards", and are pre-occupied with COVID-19 management, the new Commonwealth-state arrangements, or the tactical need not to compromise ongoing negotiations for compensation. Handily, Parliament is not sitting.

The government can say, and has said, that Labor bears its own share of responsibility for the fiasco, since schemes to combine annual tax data with social security data began in its time. That's true, a reason that it has been Greens and independents who have led the charge against robodebt. But it must be acknowledged that the class action was facilitated by Bill Shorten while Labor leader - and he could recognise a dog when he saw one. The flaw was not in wanting to cross-check entitlements, or in wanting to reduce fraud, but in the mismanagement and injustice of the way the Coalition government went about it.

It is very interesting to note that the government's capitulation to beneficiaries occurred during a period in which government has been generous to and empathetic with welfare beneficiaries, particularly those suddenly unemployed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Payment rates, including to existing unemployed people receiving starvation levels of Newstart, were increased, and the onerous and often arbitrary and punitive work-testing and compliance regimes were suspended. The government (if belatedly) recognised that the system would break down immediately if those affected were forced to wait on the phone to Centrelink or queue there for services, and measures were taken to smooth the path of getting access to and payments from Centrelink.

It was logical, of course, from the point of view of all too many in the government, and even some in the Labor Party. These new recipients were not scroungers, no-hopers or the effectively unemployable, after all. They were instead ordinary decent Australians, thrown out of work through no fault of their own. They should not be treated with hostility. They should not be forced to submit to phony tests of job-seeking activity and complete subservience to the will of random bureaucrats, or to cruel and arbitrary punishments for alleged non-compliance with extra-strict rules, ones designed to intimidate and annoy. The government would instead acknowledge the popular will that welfare, in the situation in which shutdown victims found themselves, was to be administered with alacrity, fairness and recognition of the rights and dignity of those involved. In short, just the sort of treatment that was denied the existing "welfare class".

If Morrison and his bureaucratic advisers were quick to recognise the need for a whole new approach, if through existing channels of payment, it was plain from the start that he was reluctant to surrender the whip hand with which successive governments have beaten and cowed the welfare classes. His announcement of a new system included provisos of a return to the old normality, including reduced payments, by September. [By then, he expected, the economic crisis would be over and the economy back to normal again. That now seems more uncertain, and the government is now admitting the possible need for a staged return to the past. Moreover, it is no longer being as dogmatic about plans to revert to starvation Newstart allowances.]

He also signalled an early return to work testing, and Michaelia Cash, a reliable attack dog when it comes to outright war on the underclasses, has already begun putting plans in place. There must, it seems, be no let-up in the punishment of the feckless, the workshy, and the cheats. The Australian welfare system is increasingly based on the presumption that most beneficiaries fit into these categories, and on the cold, inhumane (and increasingly computer-based) harrying of them.

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I strongly suspect that it is that mindset - and disrespect and disregard for the underclasses - that is responsible for the many fiascos in the implementation of government welfare, as well as crackdowns on fraud and overpayment. No doubt the fraudsters - like the poor - will always be with us, and no doubt they should be dealt with. But government has never shown the same zeal when it comes to dealing with the abuse of schemes working to the advantage of other classes of citizen, including companies and party donors - even in the face of evidence that the problem is much bigger there.

About 30 years ago, an ideological struggle about the role of government was successful in creating strong resentment towards welfare recipients dependent on welfare. It was not merely a matter of making people suspicious of the legal or moral entitlements of people receiving unemployment and disability pensions, or single mothers' benefits. It was a matter of inspiring resentment that beneficiaries were idlers and scroungers, taking hard-earned taxpayer money without contributing to society. Rights were removed; payments became discretionary, and added extra coercion was thrown in to comfort decent hard workers being put upon by no-hopers. Labor, afraid of being accused of favouring the welfare class at the expense of the resentful working class, became as zealous a policeman and punisher.

It is not impossible that the economic shutdown has made more Australian citizens aware of the precariousness of employment, and thus more compassionate for those trapped in welfare dependency. If that has happened, it does not seem to have been perceived by politicians.

Thank heavens that Morrison, the policeman's son who encapsulates the need to segregate those he regards as undeserving from the deserving, has the power to prevent any public examination of conscience as to how Australia maltreats its most disadvantaged citizens.