ABSTRACT
Recent decades have seen a surge of interest in holistic models of corporate responsibility, which reflect and give effect to understandings of organisational blameworthiness. This article asks what insights these developments might offer for the accountability of public juristic persons, including the Commonwealth of Australia. This question is pressing not only in view of continuing concerns over outsourcing of public services, and the ongoing blurred boundaries between corporation and state, but also the increasing automation of core public functions. In this brave new world, individualistic inquiries into, for example, ministers’ or officials’ subjective purposes, knowledge and good faith may deflect and dilute attention away from critical inquiries into organisational fault. This article seeks to provoke engagement with these ideas through a thought experiment. It models the application of a holistic model of corporate responsibility entitled Systems Intentionality, recently approved in the High Court of Australia, to a serious example of public maladministration: the Australian ‘Robodebt’ scheme. This lens suggests a culpable organisational mindset that goes well beyond the individual mistakes, ignorance and incompetence claimed by ministers and senior public servants. The article concludes that the implications for public accountability through both public and private law mechanisms merit further consideration.
Elise Bant, Rethinking Public Responsibility: Insights From Systems Intentionality (2025) 52(2) University of Western Australia Law Review 121 (February 2025).
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