Thread by @doctorow

The Australian government used an automated system to detect "welfare overpayments" from the Centrelink Agency. The system tormented Australia's poorest, most vulnerable people for years by insisting that they had been overpayed and demanding repayment with interest.

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These "robodebts" became notorious, but successive Australian governments insisted that all was well, any problems were isolated incidents, and the tales of torment and misery were just moaning from workshy shirkers who'd been bathing in government money.

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Now, the government has admitted that at least 373,000 people were billed for AUD721,000,000 that they didn't owe, and has promised to refund them. The victims of this automated system had been targeted through a "discredited income-averaging scheme."

theguardian.com/australia-news…

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Government services minister @stuartrobertmp, who helped create the robodebt crisis in 2015, did not apologise, insisting that the system "was developed to make identifying welfare overpayments more efficient."

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Neither Robert nor the Scott Morrison regime would say whether the people who'd been defrauded of $721m would be paid interest on the money that had been taken off them under false pretenses. Nor would the government confirm that it was scrapping the system.

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Leaks seen by @GuardianAus reveal that the government's own assessment of the programme is that it is only viable because people must find years-old payslips in order to challenge robodebt notices - if the system was required to establish debts on its own, it would collapse.

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Administrative arbitrators working for the Australian state repeatedly told the government that the scheme is illegal. Nevertheless, the government has pressed on, doubling down, even after it was forced to admit that it had stolen money from hundreds of thousands of people.

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It's easy to understand why. Australia is an oligarchic, neoliberal place of increasing inequality, housing insecurity, and waves of climate emergencies that threaten the habitability of much of the continent's landmass.

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To preserve the status quo in the face of these catastrophic threats, Australian elites need to make scapegoats of others - to find ways to get working people to fight amongst themselves, rather than turning on the few at the top.

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They've been mashing the "scapegoat aboriginal people button" for centuries and its efficacy started to wane. The "scapegoat asylum seekers" button started to wear out after a few decades too.

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Now it's "scapegoat disabled people, poor people, single parents and other people on benefits."

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In that logic, ALL welfare payments are overpayments, because the Australian state owes NOTHING to those people, who should have the good graces to dig holes, climb in and pull the dirt in after them.

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Their stubbourn refusal to stop needing food, shelter and care is just evidence of their moral failings.

Seen in that light, there's no reason to ever let up on robodebts.

eof/