Robodebt scheme
The Robodebt scheme, formally Online Compliance Intervention (OCI), was a method of automated debt assessment and recovery employed by Services Australia as part of its Centrelink payment compliance program. Put in place in July 2016 and announced to the public in December of the same year, the scheme aimed to replace the formerly manual system of calculating overpayments and issuing debt notices to welfare recipients with an automated data-matching system that compared Centrelink records with averaged income data from the Australian Taxation Office.

The scheme has been the subject of considerable controversy, having been criticised by media, academics, advocacy groups, and politicians due to allegations of false or incorrectly calculated debt notices being issued, concerns over impacts on the physical and mental health of debt notice recipients and questions around the lawfulness of the scheme. Robodebt has been the subject of an investigation by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, two Senate committee inquiries and several legal challenges.

On 29 May 2020, the Morrison Government announced that it would scrap the debt recovery scheme, with 470,000 wrongly-issued debts to be repaid in full. Initially the total sum of the repayments was estimated to be , however in November 2020 this figure expanded to after the Australian government settled a class action lawsuit before it could go to trial. In June 2020, Prime Minister Scott Morrison apologised in parliament for "any hurt, harm or hardship caused" by the scheme, although this apology has been described as "crocodile tears" by members of the Labor Opposition. 

The scheme was further condemned by Federal Court Justice Bernard Murphy in his June 2021 ruling against the Government where he approved a A$1.8 billion settlement including repayments of debts paid, wiping of outstanding debts, and legal costs. 
Q4294705
Services Australia
MEDIA
Q5062688
Centrelink
ORG
Q4056112
Australian Taxation Office
ORG
None
Commonwealth Ombudsman
UNK
None
Senate committee inquiries
UNK
Q56281362
Morrison Government
UNK
Q2991162
Australian government
ORG
Q2783852
class action
Concept
Q319145
Prime Minister
PER
Q7436908
Scott Morrison
PER
Q382118
parliament
MEDIA
Q1154017
crocodile tears
Concept
Q216082
Labor
Concept
Q7098620
Opposition
UNK
Q1400030
Federal Court
MEDIA
Q96402286
Robodebt scheme
UNK
2016-07-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
July 2016
DATE
2020-05-29T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
29 May 2020
DATE
2020-11-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
November 2020
DATE
2020-06-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
June 2020
DATE
2021-06-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
June 2021
DATE
+470.000^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
470,000
NUMBER
+1.8^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
1.8
NUMBER
position held