A potentially damning Robodebt royal commission report has been delayed. 

Australian officials are bracing for career-ending findings from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, which has been granted a second allocation of extra time until July 7, 2023. 

The inquiry is dealing with lengthy procedural fairness requirements surrounding potential adverse findings that could result in public servants being sacked, demoted, or even having their medals stripped. 

Attorney-general Mark Dreyfus has confirmed that the governor-general has amended the Letters Patent to extend the investigation. 

The volume of material that the Royal Commission has been required to go over has been a major challenge, with thousands of people affected by the illegal debt-levying lodging submissions as evidence of how they were affected. 

Public submissions have been posted online as recently as last week as part of the official record of the inquiry. 

The government is also facing the task of how it will respond to the findings, particularly adverse findings against public servants, who may contest any action taken against them. 

Many were surprised when the investigation revealed how easily many public servants accepted that robodebt was legal and properly authorised without basic checks and balances to affirm the scheme’s legality before raising illegal demands for money.

The government is reportedly deciding on how to use the royal commission’s findings to dump other underperforming parts of the public service.

Reports say that part of the delay of the report is due to the difficulty and long time it took to extract evidence from key witnesses at what was previously the Department of Human Services. 

The official line from the Royal Commission, prior to its report being released, is that more time is required for “administrative reasons”.