Renée Leon

Renée Elmina Leon is a former senior Australian public servant. From 18 September 2017 until February 2020, she had been Secretary of the Department of Human Services, which is now known as Services Australia. In August 2021, she became Vice Chancellor of Charles Sturt University. In September 2024, Leon was found to have breached the Public Service Act 1999 13 times for misrepresenting legal advice, failing to brief the Solicitor-General, and delaying advice to the Minister about the unlawful use of income averaging under the Robodebt scheme.

Life and career Leon graduated from the Australian National University with a double degree of Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours. In 1995, she was awarded the Sir Robert Menzies Memorial Scholarship in Law,

She has served on the Boards of the Australian Institute of Criminology, the National Australia Day Council, and the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency, and was a member of the Council of the Order of Australia.

In September 2013, Leon was appointed Secretary of the newly established Department of Employment. She was fired from her role as the Secretary of the Department of Human Services on February 1, 2020, one of five departmental secretaries let go by the Morrison Government amidst a machinery of government change that commentators described as a "massive Australian Public Service shake-up". In mid 2021 she was appointed to chair the ACT Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Steering Committee.

On August 24, 2021, her appointment as Vice Chancellor of Charles Sturt University was announced in an email to staff by the University Council.

Controversies

Involvement in the Robodebt Scheme Upon her appointment to the role of Secretary of the Department of Human Services in September 2017, Leon assumed responsibility for the unlawful Robodebt Scheme. Her actions in that role came under scrutiny during the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme.

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. These breaches related to four main incidents: Rick Morton, author of a book about the Robodebt Scheme, compared her statement to the findings of the Royal Commission, concluding that it was "deliberate misinformation".

Budget cuts at Charles Sturt University In 2025, as vice-chancellor of Charles Sturt University (CSU), Renée Leon announced that the university must cut $35 million from its operating budget by 2027 — a move she described as “distressing but unsurprising” — attributing the reductions primarily to a dramatic drop in international student enrolments and what she called unfair government funding policies that especially disadvantage regional universities like CSU.