Hundreds of thousands of people were caught in a Centrelink glut and now a major inquiry will examine how things went so wrong.
A royal commission into the controversial robot debt scheme is set to hold its first public hearing.
Government Services Minister Bill Shorten called the robo-borrowing scheme “Australia’s biggest public administration failure on social security”. Alex Ellinghausen
The commissioner and senior counsel attending will make brief opening statements, but no witnesses will be called in Brisbane on Tuesday.
The illegal debt recovery scheme began in 2015 and falsely accused welfare recipients of owing money to the government. The scheme automatically issued debt notices to people identified through a process called income averaging, which compared their reported income with tax office figures.
Similar techniques had been used in the past, but the scale of the robo-debt scheme was unprecedented.
More than $750 million was wrongfully recovered from 381,000 people.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, Government Services Minister Bill Shorten called it “Australia’s biggest public service failure on social security”.
“It was a scheme he said was aimed at getting the Centrelink cheaters to pay what they owed … the truth is the scheme was illegal,” he told reporters.
“Once a machine…a flawed algorithm claimed a debt was owed, the onus was reversed and the citizen had to prove why the government was wrong.
“These were David and Goliath struggles.”
Labor promised to convene the royal commission before the election and followed through shortly after winning.
The commission will be chaired by the former Chief Justice of Queensland, Catherine Holmes.