Rick Morton in-conversation with Bridie Jabour

From award-winning journalist and writer Rick Morton comes Mean Streak, the gripping, utterly compelling and horrifying story of how, over the course of four and a half years, Australia's government turned on its most vulnerable citizens.Robodebt was the automated debt recovery system, in which close to half a million Australian welfare recipients were illegally pursued over false debts. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a 'massive failure of public administration' caused by 'venality, incompetence and cowardice'. Essentially, Australia was gaslit by its own government. They backed something that was illegal, shook down innocent people for money, then lied about it for four and a half years.

In the tradition of Chloe Hooper (The Tall Man) and Helen Garner (This House of Grief and Joe Cinque's Consolation), Rick Morton tells a powerful and emotionally compelling story of one of the most shocking, large-scale failures of the Australian government, a historic and appalling political tragedy, which clearly displayed the wide-reaching and systematic contempt that a government had for its most vulnerable citizens.

Powerfully moving, deeply compelling and utterly enraging, Mean Streak reveals disturbing things 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.

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Rick Morton has been a journalist and writer for over fifteen years. He is the winner of the 2013 Kennedy Award for Young Journalist of the Year and the 2017 Kennedy Award for Outstanding Columnist. In 2019, Rick left The Australian where he worked as the social affairs writer with a particular focus on social policy and is now a senior reporter for the Saturday Paper. Rick regularly appears on television, radio and panels across both the ABC and commercial networks discussing politics, the media, writing and social policy.

Bridie Jabour is opinion editor at Guardian Australia. She has previously worked as a journalist for NewsCorp and Fairfax, where she has reported on social affairs, politics and regional issues. She has worked in the Canberra press gallery and was a reporter for Brisbane Times after starting her career at the Gold Coast Bulletin in Queensland. Bridie writes commentary on feminism, inequality, and pop culture, and appears regularly on The Drum, Triple J and ABC Radio Sydney. She is the author of The Way Things Should Be and Trivial Grievances.