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Final week of robodebt royal commission public hearings

Australian Associated Press
·1-min read

KEY POINTS FROM THE ROBODEBT ROYAL COMMISSION ON WEDNESDAY MARCH 8, 2023

* The commission heard from representatives from the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the independent watchdog that investigated the departments overseeing robodebt in 2017.

* Senior assistant ombudsman Louise Macleod became emotional after finding out key documents which would have ended the robodebt scheme were not provided to her investigation.

* Ms Macleod saw for the first time multiple documents including emails from 2014 flagging legal problems with income averaging.

* Had this legal advice been provided to her office, Ms Macleod said the Ombudsman would have publicly called for the scheme to cease.

* A separate email, also not provided to Ms Macleod at the time, showed the department knew 76 per cent of debts were based on averaging a person's earnings.

* The department had presented income averaging as being used only as a last resort.

* The Ombudsman investigation was triggered by a dramatic jump in complaints from people who had received Centrelink debt notices.

* The commission also heard from a Deloitte representative on the firm's technical study of robodebt.

* The Deloitte review found artificial intelligence was not present in the program.

* Rather it was a "relatively basic" automation system and could not learn from mistakes or become more accurate over time.

* The review also found the department of human services did not have any risk management frameworks related to the robodebt program.

* The fourth block of public hearings is in its final week.

* The robodebt scheme ran from 2015 to 2019 and used income averaging of tax office data to calculate and raise debts.

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