The phenomenal rise of Scott Morrison’s most favoured bureaucrat, and Robodebt’s architect, appears set to end with a crash.

But the government is grappling with a more difficult question following the release of the royal commission report that found the Canberra public servants behind the multibillion-dollar public policy disaster had been dishonest from its outset: How to fix a “soulless” public service?

The Defence Department has refused to comment on reports that Major-General Kathryn Campbell has taken personal leave from a near $1 million a year job she moved to shortly before the inquiry was established into the scheme she had overseen.

Even after Robodebt was declared illegal and “shameful” by the Federal Court, Ms Campbell was promoted to a plum job overseeing foreign affairs, awarded official honours and lauded by the former prime minister as “one of the finest public officials in our public service”.

Royal commissioner Catherine Holmes took a very different view.

Likely to mislead

Ms Campbell was involved in creating a Cabinet proposal for Robodebt that was “likely to mislead” about its legal basis but was likely, the report found, to have kept quiet about it because Mr Morrison wanted to go ahead.

It is not known whether Ms Campbell is one of the individuals referred for civil or criminal prosecution in a sealed section of the report released on Friday.

The minister now in charge of government payments systems, Bill Shorten, declined to comment on rumours sweeping Canberra that her position was made untenable by the report, beyond admitting its conclusions “did not miss her”.

But he echoed comments from experts who said the bigger issue raised by commissioner Holmes’ findings was about a system that had become “soulless”.

“Was that a bad government who didn’t want to be told bad things?” he said in an interview with Schwartz Media.

“Or was it a senior public service who had bad views, and was it an incurious intellectually unquestioning [government]?

Bill Shorten called the Robodebt conduct ‘shameful’. Photo: AAP

“Whoever was the initiator of some of this unlawful, shameful conduct, they’re all in it together.”

Mr Shorten said some changes had already been brought in at the departments he oversees, including scrapping and overhauling the threatening letters sent to people on welfare payments, which the royal commission heard had been linked to vulnerable people’s suicides.

He has promised a response to recommended bigger structural changes within months.

Wider problems

But the report’s most fundamental recommendations go beyond that portfolio, one of Canberra’s veteran public service chiefs said on Thursday.

“What worries me is there is a whole cadre of people who don’t understand that [providing frank advice] is essentially their job,” Professor Jane Halton, the former head of the finance and health departments, said.

The royal commission makes 57 recommendations for change, from training staff on integrity and making top brass accountable to hiring more public sector lawyers and ensuring there is funding so they can fulfil their duties.

Following the report’s release, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government had overseen a major change of culture in the role of public servants in government.

The government has appointed former public cervice commissioner Steve Sedgwick to review the conduct of public servants mentioned in the royal commission report.

Independent MP Kate Chaney called on the government to commit to substantial public sector reform beyond legislation passed last year that included updated “values”.

But for now, the report’s scathing conclusions about the manner in which powerful figures in Canberra dismissed or ignored concerns about the legality of Robodebt could be a sign of hope for its victims.

Class action lawyer Peter Gordon said his firm Gordon Legal had written to Mr Albanese following the report’s release requesting compensation.

Previously more than 70,000 of Robodebt’s victims had to split a comparatively meagre settlement of $100 million.

Mr Gordon said there was now hard evidence of malfeasance in public office, a legally significant finding that means those and other victims of what he called Australia’s Watergate could now be paid compensation.

“It has exposed systematic dishonesty right throughout the highest levels of government that was ongoing for years,” he said.

“I hope that the government will now do the right thing by the citizens as it has so far done consistently since it won office.”