Learning the lesson after welfare crackdown went rogue
Australians will rely heavily on technology and automated systems for government service delivery in future. That cannot end in the digital dystopia of robodebt again.
Robo-debt was a collision of technological and political hubris that was intended to trap that ever-popular media villain, the welfare cheat. Instead there is now a prospect of former senior public servants or even former ministers ending up in the dock on civil or criminal charges in the wake of the royal commission led by Catherine Holmes.
The scheme to use big data to seek out people overclaiming welfare was hasty, inept and above all, said Ms Holmes, developed “without regard to social security law”.
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