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Mean Streak
Year
2024
Language
ENGLISH
Publication Information
4th Estate
Summary
From award-winning journalist and writer Rick Morton comes Mean Streak, a gripping and horrifying account of how, over the course of four and a half years, Australia's government turned on its most vulnerable citizens. Shortlisted for the ABIA Social Impact Book of the Year 2025 Shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award 2025 Longlisted for the Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award 2025 Longlisted for the Australian Political Book of the Year Award 2025 Robodebt was a new debt-creation system that was used to illegally pursue close to half a million Australian welfare recipients for fake debts generated by the thousands. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a 'massive failure of public administration' caused by 'venality, incompetence and cowardice'. Essentially, Australians were gaslit by their own government, which doggedly and knowingly concocted a program that was both mathematically wrong and illegal, just to shake down innocent people for money, then lied about it for four and a half years. Robodebt is a historic and appalling political tragedy, a scheme created deliberately and sustained by institutional cowardice, clearly displaying the systematic contempt that a government had for its own citizens. Powerfully moving, deeply compelling and utterly enraging, Mean Streak reveals disturbing truths about the country we have become and the government that was. In the mode of a corporate thriller, this is a scouring cautionary tale of morality in public life gone badly awry - a story that is bigger than robodebt, and far from over.