Australia to refund $720m in ‘debts’ determined by dodgy algorithm
- Reference: 1590971521
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/01/robodebt_refunds/
- Source link:
The “debts” were raised under a program to identify and recoup excess welfare payments. But the algorithm used to assess the debt averaged income over a year. Which was a poor poor decision because someone whose income was low enough to see them eligible for welfare payments in part of a financial year was judged on their income for the whole year. Calculating eligibility on whole-year income could therefore retrospectively make someone ineligible to receive payments, even though their income in part of the year was sufficiently low to permit payments.
That faulty logic meant that the algorithm could raise a “debt” even though the payments received were legitimate.
The “debts” were issued automatically, not checked by government officers, and often delivered in a letter demanding immediate payment. Those letters or emails often went to physical and email addresses no longer used by supposed debtors. Many were pursued by debt collection agencies. The relevant Australian government department was unresponsive and reversed the burden of proof so that those alleged to have a debt to pay had to find years’ worth of pay slips and other documentation to disprove the debt. Many added a recovery fee of 10 percent to the "debt".
Then scheme, which came to be known as “robodebt”, caused great anguish to many. So great that at least one suicide has been attributed, in part, to receiving a debt notice.
That anguish was recognised in a 2017 Senate Committee [1]report [PDF] that found “This lack of procedural fairness disempowered people, causing emotional trauma, stress and shame.”
Official probe into HPE’s Oz 3Par crashes would create 'further negative publicity' if revealed [2]READ MORE
That report also called for substantial reform to the scheme, but it continued with only small changes.
In 2019 a Federal Court case found the scheme was unlawful and the averaging method used to calculate “debts” incorrect. In the wake of that case it emerged that bureaucrats had understood the scheme was not lawful for some time.
All of which led, late last Friday afternoon, to the announcement of refunds and the discontinuation of the automated scheme.
More than 470,000 people will receive refunds.
No minister with responsibility for the scheme has resigned or apologised. Current ministers this weekend told media the government has nothing to apologise for.
Legal action is ongoing, leaving open the possibility that the government will have to pay damages.
The policy of debt recovery will continue, albeit in an altered form.
The poor design of the scheme has also become a symbol of the Australian government’s seeming inability to execute technology-led initiatives, a dishonour roll that includes a [3]botched census , a poorly-managed and insecure digital health records program, a clunky government services portal and breaking tax services by [4]moving a SAN while it was operating . ®
[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/SocialWelfareSystem/~/media/Committees/clac_ctte/SocialWelfareSystem/report.pdf
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/17/hpe_ato_outages_final_report/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2016/11/25/ibm_clearly_failed_ddos_protection_for_australias_censusfail/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2017/05/30/twicecrashed_hpe_sans_at_oz_tax_office_built_for_speed_not_strength_and_turned_off_error_reporting/
Re: Apauling policy
And yet Scott from marketing refuses to apologise despite the court loss because he still believes it to be the right thing to do. Mainly because he’s an arsehole who panders to certain groups and hates the poor. Strange how he announced plans to support the construction industry with some handouts despite workers in the sector earning nicely above the average income, tax deducting their accessorised touring vehicles and seemingly putting nothing away for a rainy day. Fuck you Scotty.
Re: Apauling policy
Shitting on the vulnerable and underprivileged is just a normal day for the coalition. I'm positive that it gives them a tingly feeling in the pants.
I've had many, uh, "fun" dealings with whatever name Centrelink are going by this time. They tried to slap me with a robodebt, picking a financial year where for the first six months of the year, I was away from home at university, was recieving a payment and only worked four weeks (during uni breaks). Once uni finished, I went back home and worked full time and stopped receiving the payment.
Of course, they averaged out the income from all 7 months I was working over the 12 months, and reached the conclusion that I was some kind of welfare cheat. I was able to get my payslips from my employers, so off I toddled to their website, where I was presented with a form that split that year into their fortnights. Their fortnights started and ended on a Wednesday, so I had to sort my pay information into their buckets because I wasn't paid fortnightly on a Wednesday.
Naturally, once I'd done this and submitted the form (no more than 15 minutes) it timed out, so start again - fortunately I had the good sense to keep the spreadsheet with the info in it.
In a move that should surprise precisely nobody with more than two functioning braincells, no debt existed.
In this case I was lucky in that I had the resources, time and ability to get the payslips, sort the information out and send it to them and that my employers still existed so they could retrieve that information. Not everybody had this, particularly when they got one of the first versions of the letter that said "by the way, you owe us $10000 plus 10% for being a dirty welfare cheat" years after the fact.
It also didn't help that they themselves frequently couldn't calculate the debt properly. Here's an article where one person went from a debt of just over $1300 to a debt of nothing: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/august/1564581600/robert-skinner/how-i-fought-robodebt - tl;dr, after several recalculations, each spitting out a new supposed debt (including one where they owed him money), they reached the conclusion that no debt existed.
This was purely an ideological system, solely to punish those who dared to be poor or unemployed and needed help from the government. I don't believe they ever got more back from it than they ever spent on it even before this, and if they don't settle with the class action for compensation, I expect there's going to be some very dirty laundry come out as a result.
"No minister with responsibility for the scheme has resigned or apologised. Current ministers this weekend told media the government has nothing to apologise for."
Like fuck they don't, they have a lot to apologise for.
"Legal action is ongoing, leaving open the possibility that the government will have to pay damages."
I hope they pay big time.
Apauling policy
This was really bad. People living on the edge often with limited intelligence were expected to provide documentation going back years. It was very difficult to contact the department. And the department did nothing to help, even when they had documents.
This was very nasty right wing policy. Deliberate, and nasty. And it went on for years and years. It is only when it looked like losing spectacularly in a court case that the government eventually backed down.