Vikki Campion: Heartless robots still running the show at Centrelink
Not for one moment should anyone shirk from the responsibility of the Robodebt disaster, writes Vikki Campion, but have we learnt any lessons from it? Has anything really changed?
Opinion
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If you want to play the game where the Coalition is all evil and Labor comprised of all saints, you had better make sure you are right.
Not for one moment should anyone shirk from the responsibility of the administration disaster of Robodebt — primitive AI taking the place of people and assuming rather than researching, demanding rather than inquiring about repayment of debts that, in many instances, were never owed.
A royal commission found Robodebt responsible for suicides after vulnerable households were shell-shocked to find they owed so much and lacked the means to pay it back.
Two responsible ministers have offered their scalps for this debacle, resigning from parliament.
But this week, while Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth was admonishing the former government during question time for being “mean-spirited”, “evil”, “cruel”, “crude” and “callous” over its Robodebt disgrace, the briefest of glances at Services Australia’s social media pages clearly showed it remained robotically inhumane.
Centrelink debts are still being issued to the working poor without an explanation of how they were accrued.
Clients wait on call centre lines for hours trying to extract information.
Hundreds of complaints on Services Australia Facebook posts detail being unable to speak to someone on the phone. Instead a social media bureaucrat responds: “We suggest getting in touch with our Complaints line on 1800 132 468 to speak with a service officer about your concerns.”
Are they serious? A complaint about being unable to speak to a human gets a response to call the line they can’t get through on?
Imagine what it will be like if you complain about being unable to speak to a human about thousands of dollars being swiped from your account to pay an unexplained debt, only to have the one thing that helped Robodebt end — people speaking up — completely shut down?
Governments are inclined to censor people they don’t want to hear from. As we know, during Covid posts were shut down to limit “misinformation”, only for those claims to be found to be true later on.
It was only when victims of Robodebt were able to talk about it that the Senate inquiries and, finally, the royal commission even occurred.
With Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office, the government has the power to impose a debt, to enforce it and presume it is always right and you are always wrong.
On Thursday, a working mother of Indigenous children had her entire tax return taken without warning. Calling the Aboriginal line on Centrelink meant an hour and a half of listening to My Island Home on repeat.
A breakdown of the debt was “out of the scope” of the Debt Recovery call centre. A Services Australia review was the only option for a breakdown of the claim, and it would be 49 days before they would get to it. Her only solution was to go to a local branch and find a real human being.
In other places where someone demands payment for a bill they can’t explain, it’s called fraud. Sometimes, they go to jail for it.
When Centrelink and the ATO do it, to people who follow a government policy in good faith, they don’t negotiate, they take — without transparency, accountability or apology.
Minister Rishworth indulged in self-righteous grandstanding this week as a $40 increase for welfare recipients was moved in the chamber, claiming the Coalition “seem to fail to truly recognise the damage that this scheme has caused”.
She forgets it was Coalition backbenchers representing the poorest electorates who first took the fight internally to the former government.
Nobody understood how damaging it was more than those in the electorates doing it toughest.
In question time, she said the former government intended to make people feel like criminals, told they would have to “repay those debts and you may end up in prison”.
That’s very brave of her since electorate offices around the country still have letters from Centrelink saying not only do they still data match with the ATO, but that they will take money from tax returns even if there is a payment plan in place; if not, you will face legal action.
These include a retired couple who paid $80,000 from their super, after panicking with Centrelink bill shock.
Services Australia Minister Bill Shorten has ended Robodebt, but his department is yet to fully deliver a solution as Centrelink call centres blow out under the stress of childcare claims and disaster payments, all on the back of Robodebt’s reduced staffing.
In defence of stretched SA staff, they did answer 55 million phone calls last year.
Robodebt was a disgrace, but free speech identified it and ended it.
How will future problems be fixed, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s anti-free speech Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Bill that may prohibit people from discussing these issues as the government deems any attack on it as “misleading” information?
The old ministers might be gone, but the robots are just getting started.
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