Journalist Rick Morton has gone on a full-frontal attack against his fellow journalist at The Saturday Paper, Chris Wallace, accusing her of bias and dodgy reporting regarding her article on former public servant and Robodebt crook Renee Leon.

It’s a big call by Rick Morton but is backed up by the evidence. And when put together, with the lies and deception by 3 journalists reporting on the NACC / Robodebt scandal, that I reported a couple of weeks ago, it shows small media businesses and new media have just as many issues with dodgy reporting as the old media.

On a regular basis I write about old media telling lies so it’s worth looking at a small media company also telling lies.

One piece of evidence suggests that Chris Wallace might have colluded with Robodebt crook Renee Leon before Wallace published her propaganda piece defending Leon.

Before we get into the evidence, some of which is brutal, let’s look at the players.

The Saturday Paper is a weekly newspaper and website and has been publishing since 2014. It is owned by Schwartz Media who also publish the magazine The Monthly and the Quarterly Essay.

Rick Morton is a senior reporter at The Saturday Paper and Chris Wallace is a columnist for the paper and a Professor at the University of Canberra.

I don’t know Rick Morton or Chris Wallace personally and I have never had any contact with them. I follow Rick Morton on Twitter, but he doesn’t follow me so he’s probably not a KCA fan. Rick Morton is known for reporting extensively on the Robodebt Royal Commission.

Morton worked at News Corp’s The Australian for 7 years but left in 2019 after he gave a talk critical of News Corp saying “the craziness has been dialled up” in recent months and:

“Asked whether the Murdoch paper’s journalists were uncomfortable with the Australian barracking for the Coalition in the election, Morton said they were “more uncomfortable certainly now than at any time I’ve been there in the past seven years”. “There is a real mood that something has gone wrong,” (Click here to read more)

I follow Chris Wallace on Twitter, and she follows me but that probably won’t last long after I publish this article.

Renee Leon

Renee Leon was Secretary of the Department of Human Services, which is now known as Services Australia, from September 2017 until February 2020, during Robodebt and had adverse finding made against her by the Robodebt Royal Commission.

Wikipedia says:

“The Royal Commission report notes that she was not involved in the development and implementation of the scheme, and that she initially relied on advice that there were no legal issues with the scheme.

However, the Commission found that Leon had provided misleading advice to the Commonwealth Ombudsman by falsely claiming that there was “no doubt” that the scheme was lawful, a claim which the commission said “had no proper basis”.

While the Royal Commission noted that Leon was “the first to take steps” to end the scheme in 2019, it qualified this by noting that there is “no reason to suppose, however, that had Ms Leon not taken the step she did, the Government’s announcement of the cessation of the practice would have been far behind.”

“In September 2024, the Australian Public Service Commission published its findings that Leon had breached the Public Service Act 1999 13 times.” (Click here to read more)

In August 2021, Renee Leon became Vice Chancellor of Charles Sturt University.

Chris Wallace and her article in The Saturday Paper

On the 21st of September 2024 Chris Wallace published an article titled “The rot in the public service” in The Saturday Paper. (which is behind a paywall)

The Guardian reported, “Christine Wallace, a columnist with the paper, wrote that she and many public service officials believed the Robodebt findings against the “widely admired former secretary of the Department of Human Services, Renée Leon” were “unjust”.” (Click here to read more)

Rick Morton v Chris Wallace – The Saturday Paper

After Chris Wallace’s article was published on Thursday (21/9/24) Rick Morton said on Twitter:

“The newspaper for which I work has published a comment piece by Chris Wallace defending her friend of 40 years, former DHS Secretary Renee Leon. I consider the piece to be garbage revisionism, unethical and a betrayal of actual reporting and told the editors as much.” (Click here to see on Twitter)

Chris Wallace has known Renee Leon for 40 years and you have to wonder why the editors at The Saturday Paper would allow her to write an article defending Renee Leon. That’s straight out of News Corp’s playbook.

But it gets worse. Rick Morton also tweeted the below: where he says,

“I do wonder why Chris Wallace wrote this appallingly one-sided comment in support of Renee Leon on Leon’s own LinkedIn post and then decided to delete it. Was it because she wanted to write a column about it and thought this might imperil her chances?” (Click here to see on Twitter)

It is interesting to see that “Chris Wallace wrote this appallingly one-sided comment in support of Renee Leon on Leon’s own LinkedIn post and then decided to delete it” and then published an article in The Saturday Paper.

In Leon’s own LinkedIn post she played the victim, lied and deceived.

Journalist Ben Eltham responded to Renee Leon on her LinkedIn post and said:

I’m just going to leave some of the findings of Commissioner Holmes in her Royal Commission report here.

For instance, in her role as Secretary, Renee Leon pressured the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s office to remove critical commentary on the legality of Robodebt. Commissioner Holmes found that Ms Leon’s representations to the Ombudsman “were misleading and made without any proper basis.”

and: Even after receiving advice that Robodebt was unlawful from the Australian Government Solicitor, Ms Leon failed to inform the Commonwealth Ombudsman that she now had this advice — and that therefore the pressure she had put on the Ombudsman to remove a reference to doubts about the lawfulness of Robodebt was based on misleading advice. In doing so she misled the Ombudsman again.

and: As Secretary, Renee Leon was also responsible for some of the “lawfare” in which the Department sought to escape from the legal responsibility of Robodebt during the Masterson case. She was the Secretary who greenlit the legal strategy to recalculate Madeline Masterson’s Robodebt to zero, therefore hoping to get the case thrown out on the basis that there was no debt anymore, so nothing to see here. This was not DHS policy, even though Ms Leon approved it. It led to Masterson’s case being discontinued, which meant Robodebt kept operating for many more months.

and: Perhaps the most devastating finding of Commissioner Holmes is that Renee Leon failed to brief her Minister about Robodebt’s unlawfulness for five whole weeks after getting the AGS advice. Commissioner Holmes was scathing about this delay. Ms Leon had a statutory duty to inform her responsible minister immediately.

and: For me, the real issue here is that Renee Leon resided over the punitive Robodebt program for nearly two years before she took any steps to halt it, and indeed saw the scheme expand in that time under her leadership. (Click here to see on LinkedIn)

Renee Leon is a crook who is lying and deceiving trying to downplay her role in Robodebt and she should be sacked as Vice Chancellor of Charles Sturt University given the Robodebt RC findings, the Australian Public Service Commission findings and her public lies on LinkedIn over the last week.

That brings us back to Chris Wallace and her role in pushing lies in The Saturday Paper on behalf of Renee Leon.

There is not an ounce of doubt in my mind that somewhere along the way Chris Wallace and Renee Leon colluded, to lie and deceive the readers, before the propaganda piece was published in The Saturday Paper.

That is something the paper should investigate and then take the appropriate action.

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