A scathing report by the Commonwealth Ombudsman has found the government’s IT system cancelled the payments of more than 1000 JobSeeker recipients in an unlawful, automated process.
Between April 2022 and July 2024, 964 JobSeeker recipients had their payments automatically cancelled.
This is despite changes being made to the law in 2022, which required a job seeker’s circumstances to be considered before deciding to cancel income support.
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To receive income support, many job seekers are required to meet “mutual obligations”, which include attending appointments and job interviews.
The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) and Services Australia can penalise job seekers who do not meet these requirements under a systems called the Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF).
After identifying legal issues with the TCF system, the secretary of DEWR, Natalie James, paused cancellations in June 2024.
However, a further 45 job seekers received automated cancellations after the Secretary’s decision to pause cancellations, when they should not have.
After a six-month investigation, ombudsman Iain Anderson released his report today.
He found the job seekers’ payments had been cancelled unlawfully and recommended the government continue to pause cancellations until it could review the legality of the whole TCF system.
“Our central finding is that DEWR and Services Australia failed to take adequate steps to ensure the TCF was implemented in accordance with the 2022 amendment,” Anderson wrote in his report.
“This resulted in unlawful decisions to cancel income support …. we also found that the agencies failed to take all of the steps required under those amendments to safeguard job seekers.”
The unlawful use of automation in the government’s social services was of “particular concern” given the recent findings of the Robodebt Royal Commission and its impact on “highly vulnerable people”, Anderson said.
The report found that the DEWR was also meant to put in a “digital protection framework” in 2022 to ensure jobseekers were treated fairly but the department had failed to do so.
The error in automating cancellation decisions of income support went undetected by the government department for almost 18 months, from April 2022 until September 2023.
The issue was finally raised by external legal advisors in the context of providing advice to DEWR on a separate issue, the report stated.
It took another 10 months for DEWR to decide to pause decisions to cancel income support in July 2024.
Anderson said he was concerned “at the apparent lack of urgency” in the department’s response.
“We do not consider a delay of over three years, coupled with an indefinite commitment to future action, is reasonable,” the report said.
In its response to a draft version of the report sent by the ombudsman to the DEWR, Secretary Natalie James said the department accepted all of its recommendations.
The department had established a program to ensure the integrity of TCF system to make sure it was operating in compliance with legislation. An independent legal review was also underway, James wrote in a letter to the ombudsman.
“It is clear that the implementation of the TCF…did not sufficiently translate the legislative framework and policies into proper decision making and a robust IT system,” James wrote.
“It is also apparent that our governance and assurance processes are immature, fragmented across legal, policy and operations and do not adequately support the complexity of the system.”
James said she had reflected on the delay in the department’s response once the issue was flagged and its impact on vulnerable people.
Services Australia CEO David Hazlehurst said the agency had also accepted all of the ombudsman’s recommendations and had identified no factual errors in the report.
Antipoverty Centre spokesperson Jay Coonan said the findings in the report were just “the tip of the iceberg”.
“The release of the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s report is a significant moment for every person who has been subjected to compulsory activities while on a Centrelink payment,” Coonan said.
“Welfare recipients have been documenting the extreme harm caused by compulsory activities for years and consistently pushed for the government to stop harm by abolishing the cruel and infantilising rules they call “mutual” obligations. It has never been more obvious that this must happen.”
The Greens said while the government had paused the cancellation and reduction of payments under the scheme, tens of thousands of welfare recipients were still subject to payment suspensions every month.
According to the Antipoverty Centre, nearly 350,000 payment suspensions were issued in the first quarter of 2025, affecting more than 280,000 people out of the roughly 800,000 who had requirements during the period.
“The Greens are urging Labor to stop suspending people’s welfare payments right now,” Senator Penny Allman-Payne said.
“Have Labor learned nothing from Robodebt?”
Do you have a story? Contact reporter Emily McPherson at emcpherson@nine.com.au
