The Robodebt scandal has been described as a shameful chapter in Australian History due to the distress that it caused to thousands of people. According to SBS news ‘People lost marriages, they’ve gone bankrupt, they’ve lost their houses and some people have lost their lives’.
Originally the scheme was implemented by the former coalition government, which was meant to help collect debts from Australians who owed them, however it ‘aggressively pursued tens of thousands of Australians for debts they did not owe’. The Australian Taxation Office has ensured that Australians are paying and receiving the correct amount of tax and benefits using data matching systems. Previous computers were finding around 300,000 discrepancies a year; however, Services Australia only had the resources to investigate 20,000 of the higher risk cases while the rest were left unsolved. The way that the government implanted a plan to solve this was to allow an algorithm instead of humans to identify and pursue the outstanding payments which could manage to send out 20,000 notices a week rather then in a year. The scheme wrongfully notified people who didn’t owe outstanding debts, however thousands of Australians were still being pursued to and forced to pay outstanding debts.
By the time the scheme was scrapped in 2020, 470,000 people had been wrongly issued debts which the government claimed would repay them in a full cost of $21 million. Many people had incidences where thousands of dollars were taken out of their accounts without warning which impacted multiple factors of their lives, from their families to the homes and health.
Since the scheme was first introduced, there has been numerous investigations into it and the multiple issues that arouse during its use in 2017. The Federal Court found that the scheme was unlawful and that there was no way for Centrelink to have been satisfied the debts were actually correct. In 2020, 400,000 victims brought on a class action which the government agreed to settle by paying out a further $112 million in compensation on top of the existing payments they were required to pay. Unfortunately, after 6 years since Robodebt was first introduced, there is still no answer as to who is accountable for what happened.
If you or someone you know wish to discuss this issue further, then please do not hesitate to contact us on 02 8999 9809.