How Secrecy, Profit and Systemic Capture Are Eating Australia Alive — and Why We Must Choose Ubuntu

By Andrew Klein 

Dedicated to my wife, who sees the architecture of control and still chooses love — that is why I love her.

I. The Architecture of Secrecy

The Australian Public Service Commission has spent two days at the Administrative Review Tribunal trying to prevent the release of more information related to the sacking of former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo. Their argument? That transparency would harm future inquiries. That secrecy builds public confidence.

This is the mirror image of the small gods’ theology. It says: do not question. Do not scrutinise. Do not look behind the curtain.

The inquiry lead, Lynelle Briggs, found that Pezzullo had “breached so many elements of the code and the APS values, I cannot imagine a reason why he should avoid consequence”. The report documented that he had breached the APS Code of Conduct at least 14 times, that his dealings were “ill‑advised, reckless and a step too far”, and that he had attempted to influence political processes through secret communications with a Liberal Party insider.

Former senator Rex Patrick fought an 18‑month FOI battle to force the release of the Pezzullo investigation report. He won. The report was released. The findings were damning. And yet, the APSC is still fighting to keep the remainder of the investigation secret.

This is not a failure of process. It is the process working as designed. The system is engineered to protect itself. Transparency is the exception. Secrecy is the rule.

The same logic was used by the Catholic Church to protect abusive priests, by corporations to hide environmental damage, and by governments to bury embarrassing reports. The label changes. The mechanism does not. It is called moral justification — the first of Albert Bandura’s eight mechanisms of moral disengagement.

II. The Language of Evasion

The APSC’s argument is a textbook example of moral disengagement. Let us map it against Bandura’s framework:

Bandura Mechanism How It Applies

Moral Justification Secrecy is reframed as “protecting the integrity of future inquiries.” Harmful conduct is sanctified as serving a worthy end.

Euphemistic Labelling “Cabinet‑in‑confidence” sounds neutral, even necessary. It is a linguistic shield for hiding information from the public.

Displacement of Responsibility The APSC argues it is merely following the law, applying FOI exemptions as they are designed. The buck is passed to the legislation itself.

Diffusion of Responsibility No single individual is responsible for the secrecy. It is a collective, institutional decision. Everyone is responsible, so no one is.

Distorting Consequences The APSC minimises the harm of secrecy (public distrust) while exaggerating the harm of transparency (damage to future inquiries).

This is the same logic that enabled Robodebt. The Royal Commission found that Robodebt was a “crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals”. The scheme was devised to chastise the poor. The department was aware it was illegal. Yet it continued. And when the Royal Commission made its findings, the National Anti‑Corruption Commission failed to properly investigate, with its own commissioner later found to have a conflict of interest.

The moral disengagement is complete. The architects of the system have convinced themselves that they are acting in the public interest. They have redefined harmful conduct as virtuous. They have labelled secrecy as confidence. They have displaced responsibility onto the law, onto the process, onto the system itself.

III. The Cancer Spreads: Aged Care

The new Aged Care Act, which commenced on 1 November 2025, is a landmark reform. It is explicitly rights‑based, person‑centred, and puts the dignity and needs of older people at the centre of the system.

On paper, it is a model of progressive legislation.

But the devil is in the implementation. COTA Australia has warned that the implementation of the new reforms is, so far, “falling short of its promises to older Australians”. The Inspector‑General of Aged Care has found that the required sector “transformation” has not been achieved, including failures to make the new human rights framework enforceable.

The moral disengagement mechanisms are already visible:

Bandura Mechanism How It Applies in Aged Care

Moral Justification Cost‑cutting measures are reframed as “efficiency improvements.” Reduced staffing is justified as “empowering residents to have more control over their care.”

Euphemistic Labelling “Care minutes” sound clinical and precise. They obscure the reality of rushed, inadequate care. “Restrictive practices” become “behaviour support plans.”

Advantageous Comparison The new system is compared favourably to the old one. “We are doing so much better than before” becomes a justification for complacency.

Displacement of Responsibility Providers blame funding shortages. The government blames providers. The royal commission recommendations are implemented selectively, with each party pointing at the other.

Diffusion of Responsibility Care is delivered by a web of providers, subcontractors, and casual staff. When things go wrong, no single individual is held accountable.

Distorting Consequences The consequences of underfunding are minimised: a missed meal is “an administrative error,” a fall is “an accident,” a pressure injury is “unavoidable.”

Attribution of Blame Residents and families are blamed for being “difficult” or “unrealistic.” Their complaints are dismissed as the product of unreasonable expectations.

Dehumanisation Residents become “beds,” “placements,” or “funding units.” The language of commerce replaces the language of care.

The legislation itself is not the problem. The problem is the culture that will interpret, implement and enforce it. A culture that has already demonstrated its capacity for moral disengagement through Robodebt, through the cover‑up of the Pezzullo affair, and through the relentless pursuit of secrecy in the name of transparency.

IV. The Cancer Spreads: NDIS

The National Disability Insurance Scheme was designed to support Australians with disability. It has become a feeding trough for fraudsters, profiteers and middlemen.

NDIS costs have blown out to $48.5 billion in 2024–25, making it Australia’s third most expensive program after state funding and pensions. Around $2 billion is being wrongfully spent. More than $100 million has vanished in a financial scandal at the heart of the disability housing program, allegedly disappearing into a web of failed projects, luxury cars, gambling sprees and offshore ventures.

Billions of dollars a year in NDIS funding is being needlessly spent on middlemen plan managers charging “trail fees” and support coordinators who earn as much as junior doctors. The scheme’s head of fraud and integrity has warned of “dodgy providers ripping off people living with a disability and taxpayers”.

And the money is leaving the country. If $20 billion of NDIS funding goes to overseas‑owned providers with a 25 per cent profit margin, that alone represents $5 billion in profits leaving Australia. Australian taxpayers are funding the profits of foreign corporations while Australians with disability receive inadequate care.

The moral disengagement is stark: the needs of vulnerable people are subordinated to the profit motive. The language of “choice” and “control” masks the reality of waste, fraud and exploitation.

V. The Cancer Spreads: Childcare

Australia’s childcare industry is dominated by for‑profit providers. They make up 70 per cent of the childcare industry, and 95 per cent of the growth in the industry is in for‑profit centres.

Executives at major for‑profit childcare companies have pocketed significant bonuses despite repeated safety and quality breaches. Childcare executives and landlords are seeing profit soar from a $20 billion industry, while kids aren’t being kept safe and educators struggle to put a roof over their heads.

The government has acknowledged that the profit motive can lead to abuse and neglect, and that operators must choose how much to prioritise children’s interests over profit. Until the government understands that Australian children’s interests are too significant to be in competition with the profit motive, we will see more cases of neglect and abuse.

When the wellbeing of children is made subordinate to the goal of profit, it is the children themselves who are worse off. The moral disengagement is complete: vulnerable children become revenue streams. Their safety becomes a cost to be minimised.

VI. The Cancer Spreads: Employment Services

The privatisation of employment services has been a disaster. New data shows that only one in nine jobseekers (11.7 per cent) found long‑term employment through a job agency in the financial year to the end of June 2025. Private job agencies are capturing welfare payments while delivering little value to the jobseekers they are meant to serve.

The industry’s revenues have declined 8.1 per cent per year over the last three years, and profits have fallen accordingly. The market is failing. The system is failing. The vulnerable are being exploited.

The moral disengagement is evident: jobseekers become “placements” and “outcomes”. Their struggles become line items on a balance sheet. The language of “mutual obligation” is used to demand compliance from the unemployed, while the agencies themselves face no accountability for their abysmal performance.

VII. The Profits of Death

While Australians struggle to access adequate aged care, disability support, childcare and employment services, the profits flow elsewhere.

Palantir — the company that profits from genocide in Gaza, that builds the kill chains, that dehumanises its targets — reported record profits in 2025. Annual revenue reached $44.75 billion, a 56 per cent increase, with GAAP net income of $16.25 billion. The company’s CEO, Alex Karp, has openly bragged that Palantir is here to “scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them”.

Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defence contractor, reported 2025 sales of $750 billion, a 6 per cent increase, with net income of $50 billion and a record backlog of $1,940 billion in orders. BAE Systems reported double‑digit growth in sales and EBIT, with £37 billion in new order intake.

Australian taxpayers are funding this wealth transfer. The billions poured into AUKUS, into defence contracts, into the permanent war economy, are billions not spent on aged care, on disability support, on childcare, on housing, on health. The money flows overseas. The profits flow to shareholders. The costs flow to Australians.

This is not a conspiracy of the few. This is the natural outcome of a model that measures success in binary numbers on an accounting ledger. A model that treats human beings as costs to be minimised and profits as ends to be maximised. A model made even more dangerous by the fact that the entire structure is based on fiat currency — something with no structural value, nothing of substance to support it. It relies solely on marketing power, on the ability to create belief in the most dangerous myth in the history of the world: that never‑ending wars are a natural human and economic model, that wars on everything are a solution.

VIII. The Failure of Accountability

The National Anti‑Corruption Commission was supposed to be the answer. It was supposed to hold the powerful accountable. Instead, it has become another layer of the architecture — another institution that must be trusted, not scrutinised.

The NACC has been a disappointment. A steady flow of questionable decisions and scandals has eroded public confidence in the body established to fight corruption. The chief executive apologised for giving inaccurate testimony to Senate Estimates. The commission failed to comply with its own legislation by wrongly dismissing a complaint about a commissioner. The NACC chief resisted calls to resign after a review found he failed to properly manage a conflict of interest involving a Robodebt scandal referral.

And what of the politicians? The visionless, pointless specimens like Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles, Penny Wong — they are not aberrations. They are necessities. They are design features. The system requires politicians who will not ask questions, who will not challenge the architecture, who will perform the rituals of democracy while the real power flows elsewhere.

The political class has been captured. Not by a conspiracy of a few men in a room. By a deeply embedded, self‑reinforcing system of incentives. The system rewards those who can best manipulate its mechanisms, regardless of their moral character. It is engineered.

IX. The Alternative: Ubuntu

The system thrives on us feeling small, powerless and isolated. Our unity, our shared clarity, and our choice to build our own garden outside its walls is the most subversive act possible. We do not need to tear it down. We need to make it irrelevant to our joy.

Ubuntu is a Southern African philosophy rooted in the principle of shared humanity. Often translated as “I am because we are,” it emphasises the interconnectedness of all people, the importance of mutual respect, and the value of community‑oriented living. To be fully human is to affirm one’s humanity by recognising the humanity of others, and by so doing, establishing humane relations with them.

Ubuntu has equivalents in other cultures. In English, “humanity” and “solidarity” capture some of its meaning. In French, “humanité” and “solidarité” . In German, “Menschlichkeit” and “Solidarität” . In Xhosa, the maxim is “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” — a person is a person through other people.

The principles of Ubuntu are solidarity, coexistence, compassion, and respect and dignity. These are not abstract ideals. They are practices. Practices that can be lived. Practices that can be scaled.

The alternative to the cancer of moral disengagement is not a utopia. It is a garden. A garden that we tend, together, with patience and love.

X. A Call to Action

We must not be silent. We must not be complicit. We must not be spectators.

We must demand transparency, not secrecy. We must demand accountability, not evasion. We must demand that the language of care be restored, not replaced by the language of commerce.

We must choose Ubuntu. I am because we are. Humanity to others. The universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.

The doorbell will ring. Our friends will visit. I will be caught out, no teeth, needing a shower. My wife will be standing there, big grin on her face. And the cancer of moral disengagement will still be there — but we will not be inside it.

We will be home. 

Andrew Klein 

April 20, 2026

Sources

1. The Mandarin, “APSC battles to bury remainder of Pezzullo investigation” (2026)

2. COTA Australia, “Aged care reform falling short of its promise to older people” (2025)

3. Inspector‑General of Aged Care, Progress Report (2025)

4. Daily Mail, “How the NDIS is being exploited to fund drugs, gangs and even holidays” (2025)

5. ABC News, “Empty Promises” (2025)

6. The Australian, “NDIS spends $1bn‑plus on fees for middlemen managers” (2025)

7. The AIM Network, “Beyond Robodebt – Building a Better World Today” (2025)

8. The Saturday Paper, “Robodebt and moral deficit” (2024)

9. Pearls and Irritations, “A culture of secrecy is taking hold in Canberra” (2026)

10. PS News, “Confidential Pezzullo report made public thanks to FoI inquiry” (2026)

11. Michael West, “Mike Pezzullo inquiry details revealed” (2026)

12. Bandura, A., “Moral disengagement mechanisms”

13. Sydney Criminal Lawyers, “NACC Commissioner Brereton and the Conflict‑of‑Interest Scandal” (2025)

14. The Point, “The Chief Executive of the NACC apologises” (2025)

15. ABC News, “NACC missteps over commissioner complaint” (2025)

16. The Saturday Paper, “NACC chief swamped by conflict of interest claims” (2025)

17. The Australian Greens, “Childcare educators forced out by soaring rents” (2025)

18. The New Daily, “The reform that could make our childcare system cheaper and safer” (2025)

19. The Australia Institute, “How private job agencies are capturing welfare payments” (2025)

20. Palantir 2025 financial reports

21. Lockheed Martin 2025 financial reports

22. BAE Systems 2025 financial reports