One of the first actions the Albanese government undertook was commissioning the Royal Commission into the Robodebt scandal. It exposed the devastating consequences of a flawed debt identification process that operated untouched by human hands. The previous federal government wrongly told tens of thousands of innocent people they owed massive debts due to alleged Centrelink overpayments. The resulting Royal Commission found this automated system caused untold harm, including multiple suicides, and made strong recommendations to prevent another catastrophe driven by algorithmic governance.
However, when examining how the federal government currently determines home care funding packages for older Australians, a startling question emerges: what, if anything, did the Albanese government actually learn from the Robodebt tragedy?
While the government was happy to pursue the political architects of Robodebt, it now defends a deeply flawed system that removes human oversight from critical aged care decisions. Instead of trusting qualified health professionals, the government champions its Integrated Assessment Tool. This controversial algorithm is the final arbiter of the level of home care support vulnerable older Australians receive.
This algorithm operates without adequate human oversight. Trained clinicians visit older people, observe their living conditions, and write detailed clinical notes. However, the software generates the final funding outcome. Even when experienced assessors identify that an algorithm decision is dangerously wrong, they can't override it.
This intransigence defies logic and has real-world consequences. Helen Parkinson, an 85-year-old former public servant who lives alone in Canberra, experienced falls and hospital admissions that prompted an assessor to recommend high-level support. The algorithm said her case was not urgent.
Health services researcher Professor Kathy Eagar said the algorithm ignores the bulk of clinical notes entered by human assessors. A blind woman in Perth received no increased support despite rising provider costs. Thousands more languish on hidden waiting lists. More than 4800 older Australians died during the last financial year while waiting for funding they had been assessed as needing.
Despite the clear evidence of systemic failure, Aged Care Minister Sam Rae defended the assessment tool as efficient, accurate, and fair. He described a sharp rise in appeals against the algorithm as tolerable.
When finally forced to act, the government introduced a minor administrative tweak that simply allows assessors to correct basic clerical data-entry errors. It also created a carve-out for patients with motor neurone disease, an admission the system fails highly vulnerable cohorts.
The federal opposition and crossbench senators recently passed a bill in the Senate demanding the immediate restoration of the human override function. The government used its numbers in the lower house to reject the legislation.
Meanwhile, assessors continue quitting their jobs rather than rubber-stamp automated decisions they consider unsafe, and the Commonwealth Ombudsman has launched an official investigation.
The government is treating a serious structural failure as a clerical issue, even as the algorithm clearly produces flawed results.
When those flaws determine whether an older person receives a shower rail, home cleaning, or essential medical transport, human oversight is a matter of life-or-death.
The Albanese government condemned a system that removed human compassion from welfare debt recovery but defends an algorithm that rations essential in-home care for the vulnerable elderly. Why?
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