Robodebt scandal: leak reveals unlawful debts predate 2015 but government has no plans to pay back money https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/31/robodebt-scandal-leak-reveals-unlawful-debts-predate-2015-but-government-has-no-plans-to-pay-back-money Time to extent the court action

My mother received one of the robodebts of old, pre-2015. She’s the sort of lady who keeps all her bills and invoices in a folder. After she left my dad due to family violence she got a robodebt. She had to pay back money she was sure she didn’t owe

So yes. The Robodebt campaign was personal to me. It was a battle against a bureaucracy of violence: my mum sobbing in our new rental, surrounded by unpacked boxes, over a letter alleging a Centrelink debt she was sure she didn’t owe

If the ALP wants to be useful they should demand the government refund robodebts from pre-2015.

Yes, a layer of oversight was removed in 2016, undermining human vetting of debt generation. But for all we know, the faulty algorithm has been in use all the way back to 2010, when the ALP championed data matching for income compliance