"Unfortunately we do love:📱Jumping on socials trends late 💳Having our own Medicare cards👨‍💼Hank Jongen 💙The myGov app-"

Now it's "there's no evidence that any of the deaths linked to robodebt were actually caused by it".

If you google robodebt suicides right now, every result is claiming that "despite many suicides occurring shortly after receiving debt letters, there's no material evidence that the deaths were linked to robodebt".

Australian Issues Primer

Comment: Combine a neo-liberal, national government aiming to make savings at any cost using decision-making algorithms to recover money come hell or high water with the view that legal analyses were just another opinion, and with a vicious contempt for welfare recipients.

Outcome: an illegal scheme causing widespread recipient despair, even suicide, over many years and a conclusion that ministerial and public servants' conduct amounted to varieties of abuse of power.

Report:

7 July 2023

On Friday [7 July] the royal commission into robodebt handed down its damning findings into the scheme. Here’s what you need to know.

What was the royal commission investigating?

The commission was established last year to investigate the federal government scheme known as robodebt, which was designed to recover supposed overpayments from welfare recipients going back to the financial year 2010-11.

The scheme relied heavily on a process known as “income averaging” to assess income and a person’s entitlement to a benefit.

Catherine Holmes SC was asked to investigate how and why the scheme was created, designed and implemented, and who was responsible; how risks and concerns about it were dealt with and how complaints and challenges were managed by the government; the use of third-party debt collectors; and the human and economic impacts of the scheme.

There were 3,030 hours of hearings held with 115 witnesses, with more than 5,050 pages of transcripts. More than 10,000 exhibits were tendered.

What did it find?

The commission’s 900-page report released on Friday found the “cruel and crude” scheme was “devised without regard to the social security law” using an averaging process to estimate welfare recipients’ income in a manner that “was essentially unfair, treating many people as though they had received income at a time when they had not”.

Holmes accused the architects of robodebt of “an obliviousness to, or worse a callous disregard, of the fact that many welfare recipients had neither the means nor the ability to negotiate an online system” to provide evidence of their income dating back five years.

An unknown number of key figures have been referred for civil and criminal charges, although the names are in a sealed chapter of the report that has not been released publicly.

Robodebt had “disastrous effects” including “families struggling to make ends meet receiving a debt notice at Christmas, young people being driven to despair by demands for payment, and, horribly, an account of a young man’s suicide”, the report said.

Who has been implicated?

The royal commission’s report is scathing of the former prime minister Scott Morrison, former government services minister Stuart Robert and former department of human services secretary Kathryn Campbell. It also damns Alan Tudge, who was human services minister in 2017 when the robodebt scheme was under scrutiny.

Holmes directly criticised Morrison in her report for not making proper inquiries in his role as social services minister about why his department went back on its 2015 suggestion that income averaging required legislative change.

The commission all but rejected Robert’s evidence that he attempted to end the scheme as soon as possible and had serious concerns about income averaging.

It found Campbell “had been responsible for a department that had established, implemented and maintained an unlawful program. When exposed to information that brought to light the illegality of income averaging, she did nothing of substance. When presented with opportunities to obtain advice on the lawfulness of that practice, she failed to act.”

Holmes found that Tudge was “not open to considering any significant alteration, or cessation, of processes underlying those fundamental features” and used “information about social security recipients in the media to distract from and discourage commentary about the scheme’s problems represented an abuse of that power”.

What did the report recommend?

There were 57 recommendations in the report. These included that a body should be set up to monitor automatic decision-making processes, that Services Australia should establish a debt-recovery management policy, that the government should review the structure of the social services portfolio and the status of Services Australia, and changes to the Freedom of Information Act so that the description of a cabinet document can no longer justify it remaining confidential.

It also recommended that Services Australia should design policies with an emphasis on recipients, which also shouldn’t reinforce feelings of stigma associated with government support; that consideration should be given to the vulnerabilities of recipients who could be affected by compliance programs; and that a new legal framework is needed for the use of automation in government services, with a clear path for review by those affected by related decisions.

What happens next?

Some of the people criticised in the report are yet to comment publicly, so it is unclear if they dispute the findings.

Morrison rejected the findings and said he “acted in good faith and on clear and deliberate department advice” that it wasn’t necessary to legislate the scheme and “presented comprehensive evidence to support this position”.

“I reject completely each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me. They are wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear documentary evidence presented to the commission,” he said.

Robert says he has “not received a notice of inclusion in the ‘sealed section’ and I understand they have all gone out” meaning he is unlikely to be among the people referred for investigation.

Tudge has made similar comments, saying he had not received notification of any referral and “my legal team has not identified any basis of which any civil or criminal prosecution could successfully be made against me”.

Those who are criticised in the report will also not necessarily be subject to the civil and criminal referrals that are included in the sealed chapter.

Those referrals themselves could be expected to take months to investigate, and the nature of them may not be known until the individuals who have been implicated are charged, should such prosecutions occur.

But the report does note that “on the evidence before the commission, elements of the tort of misfeasance in public office appear to exist” which points to the possible nature of the referrals.

The report also noted that “where litigation is not available, the Commonwealth does have a “Scheme for Compensation for Detriment caused by Defective Administration” (which would be a very euphemistic way of describing what happened in the robodebt scheme) where a person has suffered from defective administration and there is no legal requirement to make a payment. It is not appropriate to say any more on that front.” This appears to suggest those affected by the scheme may be able to make further claims against the government (noting, however, the robodebt class action settlement).

Bill Shorten, the minister for government services, made clear that while he understood why people may be frustrated with the referrals remaining private, he did not wish anything to compromise possible prosecutions.

In a typical fictional dystopia, one might find a few common features: a bureaucratic government, a malevolent computer program, and an isolated and fearful public.

A version of this scenario took place in Australia between 2016, when the conservative-leaning government automated its system for raising debts against people who had received government assistance and allegedly been overpaid, and this year, when the government pledged to pay back $721 million that it stole from nearly 400,000 of the country's most vulnerable people. In total, more than 700,000 Australians received letters notifying them that the system had identified a debt that they owed, unless they could prove otherwise.

The scope of the crisis, often referred to as "robodebt," is immense. Thousands were hounded by the government and debt collectors for alleged overpayments, often from years prior and amounting to thousands of dollars, that simply did not exist. Many victims paid up, some appealed their debt, and trauma was visited upon a population. Tragically, some families attributed their loved ones' deaths by suicide to recieving robodebts, something the head of Australia's Department of Social Services denies happened to this day.

The program continued for years, despite scathing government hearings and reports. During this time, the volunteer-led campaign #NotMyDebt elevated victims' stories, activists organized a sit-in at a lawmaker's office, and a prominent legal scholar who was pushed out of their longstanding post in Australia's appeals tribunal for welfare payments lambasted the program. Legal aid groups launched successful challenges, and an ongoing class action lawsuit seeking damages was struck up in 2019.

There are 140 000 people with historical unpaid welfare 'debts' raised in this way who are about to get a demand for payment. All of these debts are over six years old, the average age of these debts is 19 years old. This is going to come out of the blue for so many people. There are going to be more deaths on this, mark my words.

And just, the absolute drivel all of these Labor MPs are spinning in parliament about this bill (Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2025). The Liberals don't surprise me, I had a not unexpected amount of disgust when Liberal Ms Bell got up & berated dole bludgers for wasting money she thinks should be spent on her next trophy mansion, all without a single breath to apologise for her party's role in robodebt, but the Labor MPs are just infuriating.

"Oh we don't want to reopen old wounds, that might mean we have to pay back the billions of dollars we stole- I mean upset and distress people by reminding them of this thing that happened to them for some reason, anyway so instead we'll just legalise our crimes and keep stealing money from the 140 000 people who haven't paid up yet, anything else would be unfair uwu"

Most of those 140 000 people whose historical debts are about to be reactivated are actually robodebtors, their debts are non-zeroed robodebts. The only reason they haven't paid is because their debts were raised and then quickly paused during the collapse of the robodebt scheme. Ever since then these debts have been left in limbo while the Labor government tried every legal loophole to continue collecting. Now they're just going to rewrite the law to achieve that end.

To their credit they did send the bill off to be looked at by the human rights committee, who responded with a long essay on "this is extremely wrong, especially for the 140 000 debtors, most of them vulnerable working poor, who are about to pursued for historical debts, this is in breach of multiple human rights treaties that Australia is signatory to". And the Labor government's response was "yes very sad anyway".

It doesn't even stop there. Yesterday they rammed through an amendment which lets them cancel the welfare payments of people wanted by police. Not people who are charged, convicted and jailed, welfare payments are already automatically cancelled for actual jailed crooks. This amendment is to cancel welfare payments for people simply wanted by police for 'serious offences'. And they're spinning that as "oh to help women with abusive partners" but the word of the legislation is literally any 'serious offence'. Now why would this amendment even come up in a bill about 'fixing' illegally raised welfare debts? It seems fairly irrelevant to robodebt and other income averaging related fuck ups, right? Well the real unspoken reason is because a 'serious offence' is legally defined to include things like murder, terrorism and having a welfare debt (talk about one of these things ain't like the other, but that's another topic on the absolute state of our welfare system) Anyway so if you get a demand for payment on your historical robodebt and choose to simply go missing (like I and so many others did during the first round of robodebt) that's what this law is aimed at.

That lil amendment was rammed through in the dark of night with no debate, which you can compare to the two proposed amendments that have been sitting in the wings for months, just quietly gathering dust. The first is Allegra Spender's proposed amendment to make reporting requirements for domestic violence victims easier and the second is Andrew Wilkie's proposed amendment to simply reinstate the six year limit on government debt collection, just like the Robodebt Royal Commission recommended. The former would actually help women with abusive partners and the latter would do away with the need for this entire clownshow of a bill, but neither the cops nor the govt can benefit from either of those proposed amendments so🤷‍♀️

Then we come to the 'resolution scheme' that was originally what this bill was supposed to be about. It was supposed to provide compensation payments to people who now have to suffer the consequences of the government retrospectively legalising their own crimes. Ofc the 'eligibility criteria' for the compensation is being left up to the demons at Centrelink, so I imagine it'll be something like "ur only eligible for compensation if you can lick ur elbow tee hee". Also accepting the payment releases the government of all liability irt that victim (so I'll definitely be interested to see how that works out for the people about to be prosecuted over their historical debts). The most hilarious part tho is that there's a one year limit on acceptance of that payment/waiver of liability deal. So I have one year to take it or leave it, but the government can't even enact a six year limit on debt collection, like the Robodebt Royal Commission told them to? Rules for thee not for me I guess.

No really, I've been laughing about this nonstop for 24hrs now. It's just amazing, a work of politico-legal art. The Australian government were fully in the swing of interpreting this case in the most depraved way possible. The Federal Court judges suggested the govt 'recalculate the debts they illegally raised' & the govt went 'that's nice, but it's still technically legal for us to retrospectively legalise three decades worth of our criminal behaviour, that way we don't have to pay back what we stole aaaaaaand the 140 000 people we haven't been able to collect on yet still have to pay us &/or die'. They thought they were cool to do that. Federal Court is the last stop right? Special leave to the High Court is so rarely granted, why even worry? The High Court isn't going to care about a few hundred thousand poor people, hand me the bill for legalising our crimes so I can assent.

IT'S THE HIGH COURT JUDGES.

I dunno if it was all the human rights groups (& even the govt's own human rights committee) pointing out how this bill is breaking international human rights treaties with it's pursuing the working poor for historical debts & cancelling welfare for anyone remotely suspected of a crime. Maybe it's how this essentially resurrects income averaging & literal robodebts. Maybe it was just the utter disrespect shown to the Federal Court judges by using their decision for evil. I dunno, but the judiciary has stepped tf up.

Parliament adjourned on this dumbass fucking bill of theirs the literal day the High Court judges came out with this. They're not going to talk about this bill for another two weeks apparently (they'll probably spend the whole time crying/pissing/screaming/workplace harassing whoever is involved/finding a scapegoat/probably stealing candy from a baby/killing puppies/telling the media to report 'this will never happen again'/etc). Will the bill even pass? Looks unlikely now. I mean, the govt showed their entire ass to the judges, just laid down their whole degenerate hand on the judicial poker table, so now the High Court knows the government will take the most nefarious interpretation possible of any decision they make. I think the polite suggestion the govt got in the Federal Court might be in short supply now. In any case that's another couple years extension on my robodebt.