By Andrew Klein and Sera Elizabeth Klein

Reader’s note: We do not need readers to agree with us. We need them to check the sources, test the argument, and reach their own conclusion — even if that conclusion is that we are wrong.

Abstract

This paper examines the structural absence of consequence for political misconduct in Australia. Drawing on the psychological literature on lasting relationships, the documented history of sovereign immunity, and the specific case study of the Robodebt scheme, it argues that Australian politicians are not subject to the same standards of accountability as the citizens they govern. It documents the mechanisms by which this impunity is maintained: parliamentary privilege, the limitations of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the absence of criminal prosecutions for political misconduct, and the electoral cycle as the only available remedy. It concludes that the impunity of the political caste is not a failure of the system but a structural feature of it — one that produces indifference to outcomes and undermines the legitimacy of democratic governance.

I. Introduction: The Question of Consequence

In 2023, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme delivered its final report. The scheme, which had operated between 2015 and 2019, had wrongly raised debts against hundreds of thousands of Australians. It had caused financial distress, mental health impacts, and deaths by suicide. The Commission found that the scheme was “a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal”.

The Commission referred six individuals to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) for investigation. Those referred included former Prime Minister Scott Morrison. In March 2026, the NACC released its findings. Two public servants were found to have engaged in “serious corrupt conduct“. But the investigation concluded there was “insufficient admissible evidence” to refer them for criminal charges. Morrison was cleared.

No one was prosecuted. No one was fined. No one was imprisoned. The system that produced the scheme remains unchanged.

This paper asks a simple question: why?

II. What Makes a Lasting Relationship

The psychological literature on lasting relationships identifies three core components: acceptance, respect, and reciprocity. These are not sentiments. They are practices. A lasting relationship requires “seeking knowledge, verifying attributions, displaying acceptance, and striving for reciprocal balance” as “continuous processes that create the synergy of a lasting, close relationship”.

Trust is the foundation. Interpersonal trust is defined as “expectations that the partner will do what is promised” — reliability trust. Trust serves to “fend off relationship threats” and is “related to intimacy“. In a functioning relationship, trust is not naive. It is built through “reciprocal reassurance processes” over time.

The absence of these components — the absence of reciprocity, the absence of reliability, the absence of respect — produces what any person would recognise as a broken relationship. But when the relationship is between citizens and their government, the same standards are not applied.

III. Why Voters Tolerate What They Would Never Tolerate Personally

3.1 The Partisan Trade-Off

Voters are not indifferent to misconduct. They are making trade-offs. Research from the University of Texas finds that “voters are not indifferent, but they are making trade-offs. They are choosing to tolerate scandal when other priorities, especially partisan alignment, take precedence”.

The conjoint experiments across the United States, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Mexico, and South Korea found that “partisanship has much stronger direct influences on voting intentions than policy agreement and especially undemocratic behaviour”. Voters notice the misconduct. They just weight their partisan identity more heavily.

3.2 Moral Licensing

A second mechanism is moral licensing — the psychological process whereby “past good deeds can liberate individuals to engage in behaviours that are immoral, unethical, or otherwise problematic”. A politician who has delivered for their constituency, or who represents a cause the voter believes in, is granted a licence to behave in ways that would be unacceptable in any other context.

3.3 Polarisation as a Scandal Multiplier

Affective polarisation — the tendency to view political opponents as enemies rather than adversaries — actively erodes democratic accountability. As polarisation intensifies, “voters have become more likely to overlook misconduct, especially in general elections where partisan stakes are higher“. The logic is straightforward: if the other side is a threat to your way of life, then the misconduct of your side is a lesser evil.

3.4 The Normalisation of Misconduct

Finally, there is the effect of normalisation. “Perceiving corruption as common may increase tolerance for corruption, rather than encouraging voters to punish corruption“. When every politician is seen as corrupt, the corrupt politician is no worse than the others. The baseline shifts. What was once scandalous becomes ordinary.

IV. The Divine Right of Kings and Its Modern Vestiges

4.1 Rex is Lex

In the medieval and early modern period, the doctrine of sovereign immunity held that “the King, as the source of the law, could do no wrong” — rex is lex. The monarch was not subject to the law because the monarch was the law. This was not a metaphor. It was a legal reality.

The Bill of Rights of 1689 and the American Revolution of 1776 were supposed to end this. But the doctrine did not die. It migrated. It became the modern doctrine of sovereign immunity — the principle that a state cannot be sued without its consent, and that its officials are immune from prosecution for acts performed in their official capacity.

4.2 The Monarchical President

In 2024, the United States Supreme Court “reinterpreted the Constitution to afford monarchical immunity powers to American presidents”. The Nation described it as “the Supreme Court just brought back” the divine right of kings. The President, like the King before him, was declared to be above the law — at least for “official acts.”

This is the logical endpoint of a legal tradition that has always privileged the sovereign over the citizen. And the political class — the ministers, the bureaucrats, the consultants — inherit a diluted version of the same immunity.

4.3 The Caste as a Court

The political caste functions as a modern court. It is not a court of law. It is a court of sovereignty. Its members are not subject to the same rules as the governed. The MP who cuts the NDIS does not use the NDIS. The minister who approves the data centre does not live next to it. The bureaucrat who designs the algorithm does not experience the algorithm.

This is the modern divine right. Not a divine right to rule — a divine right to not suffer the consequences of ruling.

V. The Australian Case Study: Robodebt and the Absence of Consequence

5.1 The Scheme

The Robodebt scheme was an automated debt-raising system that used income averaging to calculate alleged overpayments to welfare recipients. It wrongfully raised debts against hundreds of thousands of Australians. It caused financial distress, mental health impacts, and deaths by suicide.

5.2 The Royal Commission

The Royal Commission found that the scheme was “a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal”. It recommended criminal and civil investigations into politicians and public servants involved in the scandal.

5.3 The NACC Investigation

The NACC investigation found that two public servants engaged in “serious corrupt conduct“. But the investigation concluded there was “insufficient admissible evidence” to refer them for criminal charges. Morrison was cleared.

5.4 The Outcome

No one was prosecuted. No one was fined. No one was imprisoned. The system that produced the scheme remains unchanged. As the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) noted: “More than five years after the Federal Court ruled Robodebt unlawful, no criminal proceedings have taken place”.

VI. The Mechanisms of Impunity

6.1 Parliamentary Privilege

Parliamentary privilege protects members from legal action for statements made in Parliament. While this is necessary for free debate, it also means that misleading Parliament is not a criminal offence. It is a contempt of Parliament, which is investigated by the Privileges Committee.

The Committee can recommend sanctions, including fines or suspension. But these sanctions are rare and rarely enforced. As one analysis noted, “misleading the House can get you sacked if you are a Minister – and has on quite a few occasions. The latter, even if you are caught out, will likely go unpunished”.

6.2 The Limitations of the NACC

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) was established in 2023 with broad jurisdiction to investigate “serious or systemic corruption“. However, it cannot prosecute matters in its own right and must refer cases to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

The NACC’s findings in the Robodebt case demonstrated its limitations. It found “serious corrupt conduct” but concluded there was “insufficient admissible evidence” to refer the individuals for prosecution.

6.3 Sovereign Immunity

Sovereign immunity protects the state from being sued without its consent. While Crown immunity from suit was abolished by the Judiciary Act 1903, the doctrine of sovereign immunity still applies to heads of state and senior officials. This means that politicians cannot be prosecuted for acts performed in their official capacity.

6.4 The Electoral Cycle

The only remedy available to voters is the electoral cycle. But this is not enough. As one analysis noted, “the only solution offered is the electoral cycle and that is obviously not enough”. Change of government does not lead to the prosecution of previous governments. Robodebt is just one example.

VII. The ICC and the Enforcement Gap

7.1 The Nuremberg Principles

The challenge did not begin with the ICC. It began with Nuremberg. The Charter of the International Military Tribunal stated that “the official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State or responsible officials in Government Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment”.

7.2 The Rome Statute

The Rome Statute, which established the ICC, codified this principle in Article 27, which states that immunities are not a bar to the Court’s jurisdiction. In 2024, the Court issued a non-compliance finding against Mongolia for failing to arrest Vladimir Putin, confirming that the obligation to cooperate applies even when the suspect is a sitting head of state.

7.3 The Enforcement Gap

But the gap between the law and its enforcement is vast. “Several States Parties have refused to comply with ICC arrest warrants for heads of state”. The principle is clear. The political will to enforce it is not.

This is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of the states that claim to uphold it. The law is universal. The enforcement is selective.

VIII. Was Milosevic the Exception?

Yes. And that is the point.

Slobodan Milosevic was “the very first Head of State to be not only indicted but also prosecuted by a court other than his one from his own state“. But since Milosevic, other former heads of state have been brought to justice — Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor. These are the exceptions that prove the rule.

The rule is that heads of state are not prosecuted. The exceptions are those who lose power, who are abandoned by their allies, who become inconvenient to the system that once protected them. Milosevic was not held accountable because the international community suddenly discovered a commitment to universal justice. He was held accountable because he lost.

IX. Conclusion: The Desert and the Fences

The tolerance of political misconduct is not a moral failing of individual voters. It is the structural output of a system that has inherited the divine right of kings and dressed it in democratic clothing.

The political caste is not subject to the same rules as the governed. It is protected by sovereign immunity, by party discipline, by media cycles that move on, by an electorate that has been taught to expect nothing better. The ICC challenges this — but only at the margins, and only when the powerful decide that a particular leader has become expendable.

The question is not whether the law exists. It does. The question is whether the law applies to them. And the evidence, across every domain we have examined, is that it does not.

The desert is real. It has boundaries. And the political caste is the one building the fences.

References

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13. International Law Commission. (1950). Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal. https://legal.un.org

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Verification note: Every factual claim in this paper should be checked against the sources provided. Readers are encouraged to verify independently. If any claim does not hold, it should be discarded.