A ghost haunts the halls of Australian governance. It is the ghost of Robodebt – a scheme now synonymous with unlawful, systemic cruelty. Yet, before this ghost has even been properly laid to rest, a new spectre has risen. Schedule 5 of the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Technical Changes No. 2) Bill 2025 is a fundamentally flawed law that repeats the same destructive patterns: punishing the vulnerable, bypassing legal principles, and showcasing a profound form of absentee governance.
This is not merely a bad policy; it is bad law, and its trajectory is already written in the tragic history of its predecessor.
The Flawed Mechanism: Punishment by Allegation
The new law grants the Federal Court the power to suspend or tightly restrict a person’s social security payments if they have been charged with a “serious offence” and are deemed a “serious risk” to the community.
This mechanism is built on a foundation of sand, violating two core legal principles:
- The Presumption of Innocence: The bedrock of our justice system is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. This law inverts that, imposing a severe financial penalty – the loss of one’s means of subsistence – based on an allegation. It forces the accused to prove they are not a risk, a direct assault on a fundamental right.
- Punishment Without Conviction: Cutting off income is a punishment with devastating consequences: homelessness, inability to afford legal defence, and spiralling despair. To impose this at the point of charge, using the lower civil standard of proof (“balance of probabilities”), is to create a parallel, extra-judicial punishment system for those who rely on social security.
The Ghost in the Machine: The Robodebt Precedent
To understand why this law is so dangerous, one need only look to the recent past. The Robodebt Royal Commission provided a masterclass in how “bad law” leads to catastrophic human outcomes.
- The “Bad Law”: The Robodebt scheme was found to be unlawful because its core mechanism – “income averaging” to calculate debts – had no basis in the social security law. It was a crude, automated system that presumed guilt and forced citizens to prove their innocence.
- The Human Cost: The Royal Commission heard harrowing evidence of the suffering it caused, leading to profound distress and, tragically, suicides. It was labelled a “crude and cruel mechanism” that was “neither fair nor legal.”
- The Legal Reckoning: The case of Limbo v Little (2023) saw the Federal Court rule the scheme unlawful. The Royal Commission’s final report laid bare a “massive failure of public administration,” condemning ministers and senior public servants for their roles in a scheme they knew, or should have known, was flawed.
The new “community safety” law is walking the same path. It is another politically expedient scheme that uses legislation as a blunt instrument, sidestepping legal safeguards to target a marginalised group. The question is not if this law will be challenged and struck down, but how much harm it will cause before justice prevails.
The Absentee Landlord Syndrome: Governing from a Distance
Both Robodebt and this new law are symptoms of a deeper sickness: absentee governance. This is a philosophy of governing from a distance, where policy is designed in sterile ministerial offices, utterly detached from the human reality of its consequences.
Like an absentee landlord who issues eviction notices without ever seeing the tenant’s face, the government crafts laws that inflict punishment without witnessing the devastation. They speak of “community safety” and “a small cohort,” using abstract language to sanitise the very real outcomes: hunger, homelessness, and the destruction of lives.
This syndrome is characterised by:
- A Failure of Consultation: Genuine, robust public consultation with legal experts, community advocates, and affected individuals is ignored in favour of political expediency.
- A Disregard for Warning Signs: The lessons of Robodebt – the legal challenges, the public outcry, the Royal Commission – are treated as political noise, not fundamental lessons in justice and administration.
- A Lack of Accountability: The architects of these schemes are often shielded from the fallout, while the most vulnerable bear the full cost of their failure.
The Path Not Taken: Avoiding the Cycle of Harm
The alternative to this cycle of cruelty is not complex; it is a return to basic principles of good governance:
- Respect Foundational Legal Principles: Any law must be built upon the bedrock of the presumption of innocence and the rule of law.
- Engage in Genuine Co-Design: Policy affecting the most vulnerable must be developed with them, not imposed upon them. This means meaningful consultation with ACOSS, legal aid bodies, and community representatives.
- Prioritise Evidence, Not Rhetoric: Policy must be driven by data and expert advice, not by a desire to appear “tough” for a news cycle.
- Learn from History: The Robodebt Royal Commission must serve as a permanent warning, not a forgotten report. Its findings on accountability and lawful administration should be required reading for every minister and public servant.
The new law to strip welfare payments from those merely charged with a crime is a direct descendant of Robodebt’s cruel logic. It is a betrayal of legal principle and a failure of moral courage. As with Robodebt, the ministers and officials who conceived and championed this policy must be held to account for the harm they will inevitably cause.
We must not wait for another Royal Commission to tell us what we already know. This is a bad law. It must be challenged, and it must be repealed before it can destroy more lives. The ghost of Robodebt is warning us. We would be fools not to listen.
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This article makes it painfully clear that Labor has learned nothing from the horror of Robodebt. In fact, they are now repeating the same cruelty with new packaging. Cutting off someone’s payment based on a charge, not a conviction, is exactly the kind of punishment without due process we saw under the LNP. The tragedy is that Labor promised to be better, yet here they are copying the same mindset and the same disregard for legal principles.
For a party that condemned Robodebt so loudly, it is shocking to see them introduce a law that treats vulnerable people as expendable once again. Labor was elected to fix this kind of injustice, not reinvent it. If anything, this shows that the two major parties have become almost indistinguishable, both willing to sacrifice the rights of ordinary people to look “tough” in the headlines.
Australia deserves a government that protects the vulnerable, not one that keeps finding new ways to punish them. Labor’s behaviour here is not just disappointing. It is worse, because they knew the harm Robodebt caused and still chose this path.
It’s deliberate abuse, a bastard policy choice made by Government and successive governments for private shonky providers, end of story.
It’s the same with housing, energy and climate policy and its high time we got rid of these holier than thou Government ministers who speak thru both sides of their mouth and clearly have their noses in the trough for their own and lobbyists benefits.
I love your last paragraph, such a government is exactly what the country needs. But all the time we support the two party system, nothing will change.
All the time our political duopoly vilifies new comers to the scene and we the public believe them, it will just be more of the same.
I had hopes for the Democrats but with the retirement of Don Chipp momentum was lost, sadly, the electorate seems to be locked to either Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum and so it goes.
Underlying this is the idea that many people seeking help from the social benefit system are undeserving. This attitude has been around for a very long time and it leads to the policing of people on benefits in intrusive ways that are not applied to the rest of society.
There are many ways to transgress: earn too much, save too much, live in the wrong area, have a sexual partnership with someone who is earning, have an undeclared sexual partnership with someone who is also on benefits, fail to report to Centrelink fortnightly or on time, fail to attend an interview with a job search provider, or possible employer, turn up at a job interview but present yourself inadequately …
You have to be practically destitute and as faithful to the DSS as if you were married to it to get an amount of money that is barely enough to survive on.
Great article Andrew.
Labor have shown that they are every bit as inhumane as the Coalition. Labor serves the corporate elite and not the people, just as the Coaltion did.
Labor has left approaching 4 million Australians in poverty since it took office well over 3 ago.
This Albanese Labor government seems to believe in the undeserving poor just as the Coalition before it did.
A symptom of increasing corporate and local authoritarianism for corporate leaders, their masters and shareholders.
A now retired public service HR Head complained a decade ago that nothing is up for discussion anymore, just ‘follow orders’ under the guise of productivity, being agile, efficiency etc.
Informed senior ‘skip’ management who floated to the top through seniority, ‘holding their chairs’, boys network etc. as many lack optimal skills and education; paranoia about younger, diverse and more educated generations.
Lyndal:
One does not even need to transgress. I was once suspended (briefly) for not attending an appointment that a) I had not been informed of and b)had been cancelled by the other party.
Leefe,I agree, I was nearly suspended because I queried that an appointment hadn’t been communicated to me, I asked the day before for confirmation of expected appointment, and was told there was not one on the record so I didn’t need to attand. I did anyway and was told I should have been there 2 hours earlier, I arked up and complained about the lack of communication and my efforts to confirm said appointment. Then all of a sudden all complaints and threats were withdrawn, when they cinfirmed my assertions.
The system isn’t broken, it is designed to entrap and punish. That is just 1 example, please don’t get me started on the others!!
A disgrace in the way it has been handled.
A disgraceful hypocrisy, when MPs, political staff and public servants are singularly the most prevalent breakers of the law, in particular, committers of fraud by act or omission. Yet almost none are charged, prosecuted or sanctioned in any way within their closed ranks.
And MPs in particular make legislations to cover their hides.
And yet there is not one person in those departments – not even the portfolio ministers – who exemplify any productivity, agility or efficiency, In fact the complete opposite.