> Fighting the debt notices proved extraordinary difficult, as the onus of proof required citizens to provide documents proving the debt was incorrect. As the program looked back at years of payment history, many simply couldn't find records of past income – or lack of it.
How would you even prove a lack of income for a specific period of time (shorter than I assume annual tax reports)?
I had to deal with this for our little league, when the state decided circa 2009 that some sales tax filing was missing from 1977. It was a trivial amount that had ballooned to 5 figures with fees, penalty and interest. Fortunately the league had a long standing banking relationship and we were sort of able to assert that a payment was made.
But in the end, only loud complaints to legislators settled the matter.
Instead of robodebting the poor, they should use their resources to fix this MyGov crapshoot. You approve various departments to share your data, then whenever you apply for something (e.g. senior citizens card which I recently had to help someone do) they ask you to enter hours’ worth of input instead of actually getting the data from the approved department (e.g. ATO).
Centrelink is slowly working on this (although glacially). The new earnings system uses Single Touch Payroll info from ATO seamlessly where it's available.
Background data matching is becoming more automated, which should give way to future prefill opportunities.
Given how much money the department spends on processing staff (and how unreliable they are), it's absolutely in their best interests to work on such systems.
You mention myGov, which is interesting. myGov doesn't 'connect' services, and information doesn't pass through myGov; all info is shared between the services directly. myGov is purely a secure portal, nothing more.
This isn't the 90s I don't know how anyone could consider the democrats to be the party representing the poor. Exploiting for political gain maybe, but liberal policies have completely screwed the poor. This is not just me trying to be partisan, there has been a global (edit: anglosphere) shift in liberals abandoning the working class for ideology and the role of what used to be pro worker pro union further left parties now being squarely on the right.
> there has been a global (edit: anglosphere) shift in liberals abandoning the working class for ideology and the role of what used to be pro worker pro union
The UK Liberals faded away after the mid 1920s, like the Australian Liberals (rich conservatives) they were never particularly pro union and were only ever pro worker | pro welfare in a patronizing condescending manner ala "Daddy knows best".
Both the UK and Australian populations had strong political Labor Parties as principal opposition to conservative ideals for the past century, these were the parties that were strongly pro worker and pro union.
These UK and Australian Labor parties have been less so since the 1980s and the Thatcher years as unions have dwindled in power (compared to times past).
Absurdity in the lack of testing. I know it probably wasn't the fault of the implementers, but the management above them, but gosh, "move fast and break [people]" is not how financial software should be made.
There was pre-existing systems, could have just ran it side-by-side to see if it agreed with the old methods.
With how completely avoidable this result was, with people raising flags all the way through, I feel that the only conclusion is harming citizens must have been part of the intention.
> With how completely avoidable this result was, with people raising flags all the way through, I feel that the only conclusion is harming citizens must have been part of the intention.
You are absolutely correct regarding their malice. The minister responsible for the implementation of the illegal scheme was former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who went so far as to purposefully mislead his cabinet. The former Prime Minister is despised by the general public at this point, and his will likely be recorded as the most cruel and criminal government in Australia's recent history.
Computing and governance does not mix. There is no greater oppression than the combination of both, as if the German past was not example enough. We've all been sold out by the Brits.
Speaking of brits, the hmrc provides a crappy little chatbot thats nearly useless and to sweeten the deal they shut down self assessment phone support. Literarily hell dealing with them.
The identifiers weren't the (technical) problem. It was that the taxation office collected information on an annual basis whereas the benefits law is based on fortnightly income. Of course, the real problem was that a single APS4 had vastly more moral fibre and leadership quality than the Minister, Secretary, and Deputy Secretary put together.
The real problem is that there will never be any consequences for the Minister, Secretary, and Deputy Secretary.
For them, it was an excellent program that burnished their resumes and gave their brands a bit of "tough on the freeloaders" style. It was an excellent decision for them to have made, and if other officials now or in the future are confronted by a similar choice, in terms of their own personal benefit it would be an excellent decision for them to make again.
You’re probably right but, man, I hope you’re wrong. We’ll see if anything comes of the sealed section of the report that’s been referred to the AFP (FBI equivalent).
> It was that the taxation office collected information on an annual basis whereas the benefits law is based on fortnightly income
It could have worked if it had human review after the system flagged it. Instead the debt was sent out automatically and it was a guilty until proven innocent thing.
The people setting up the system knew it was wrong and illegal but they didn't care as they liked using the poor as a revenue raiser, and politically the "dole bludgers" are a good target.
"To understand why, consider someone who spent three months of the year receiving unemployment benefits while they searched for a job, then worked for nine months. The government considered their income for the entire year and averaged it, then assessed their eligibility for payments based on their average fortnightly earnings – not their income when they were out of work and therefore eligible for payments."
Because the Australian government averaged the yearly income to see if the average fortnight was below the mark. Instead of following the law which gave benefits to those who had low income for a brief period.
This was not a software issue. This was a willful top-down policy choice to use bad math. (At least, so the article says. I don't live in Australia.)
What was also amazing about it, is they would use your old address when you received welfare payments, but not update this from other systems such as the tax system. This meant that the debt letters were being sent to the wrong place, and then eventually handed over to debt collectors to chase. Credit scores were impacted because of this.
No you're not understanding. There is a unique ID, in this particular context it's called a CRN (customer reference number). Every person who receives social security in Australia has one and they're fixed for life.
The lack of unique ID has nothing to do with this. This was government blatantly attacking poor people through willful mismanagement of an automated debt inferment system in conflict with the legal process through which that debt should have been calculated.
They 100% knew what they were doing and did it deliberately.
The way this played out was maddening and frustrating for the people involved, and we're told went against the letter of the law; it looks like it matched income after the unemployment event against the unemployment payments...
but looking at the calculation that was done, it was not incredibly immoral or something, "if average income in a year was greater than welfare eligibility for that year, no eligibility" doesn't sound kafkaesque. The cost of unemployment insurance will reflect the average payouts, and people who treat unemployment as an entitlement (you're supposed to look for a job, not squeeze every nickel out of the system) just drive the costs up for everybody else.
People who yearn for socialism, yes, they want every benefit they can get. People who yearn for systemic efficiency, taking a moving average of your income and filling in where it falls short sounds like a good method.
How would you even prove a lack of income for a specific period of time (shorter than I assume annual tax reports)?