Renewed scrutiny for Centrelink's 'robot-debt' program

The Commonwealth Ombudsman has agreed to open a new investigation into Centrelink's Online Compliance Intervention (OCI), better known as'robo-debt'. The OCI is a government initiative to recover supposed welfare overpayments. As part of the OCI, hundreds of thousands of letters have been sent to current and former welfare recipients asking them to explain discrepancies between Australian Taxation Office (ATO) income data and income reported to Centrelink. If they were unable to explain the difference, then a debt would be raised against them. The program was widely criticised for putting the onus on individuals to explain discrepancies in government data.