On Wednesday I wrote about the aged care algorithm that assessors aren’t allowed to overrule, and about a statistician who told me forty years ago that you can’t scribble a note in the margin of a computer screen.[1] The same morning, the ABC reported a story that shows what it costs when nobody can.[2]
Daniel
Daniel is a 51-year-old man in Adelaide. In 2022 his Centrelink payments were suspended, even though he was exempt from mutual obligations and had no compulsory activities to complete. He told the ABC: “I kept ringing them and saying, ‘I’ve got zero points, I’ve got no requirements. Why am I getting these suspensions?’ But it just kept happening.”[2]
Then his payments were cancelled. He was without income support for more than three years. Without it he couldn’t secure a rental, he went through periods of homelessness, and he relied on family and friends to get by.[2]
A week before his appeal was due to be heard, in October 2025, the decision was reviewed and reversed, and he was paid about $53,000 in back pay.[2]
What the back pay doesn’t cover
$53,000 sounds like a lot of money. Spread over more than three years, it is well under $20,000 a year. And it isn’t compensation. It’s the money he was owed all along, paid late.
What it can’t pay back is the three years. The phone calls that went nowhere. The nights without a place of his own. The favours asked of family and friends. The constant worry about what happens next week.
We don’t know why Daniel was exempt from mutual obligations, and it’s not our business. But think about it the other way round. Take a completely healthy person, with no illness and no other trouble, and cut off their only income for three years. Make them argue with a system that keeps saying no, without ever telling them who decided or why. Most of us would find that crushing. Whatever the reason for Daniel’s exemption, it can only have made it harder.
The law asked for the note in the margin
This is the part that bothers me as a software person. After Robodebt, the law was changed. Before cancelling someone’s payment, the agency had to consider that person’s circumstances.[2] In my terms, the law asked for exactly that note in the margin.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman found 964 cancellations between April 2022 and July 2024 where that didn’t happen. They “occurred automatically”.[2] Part of the cause, the department says, was “an IT system change introduced in December 2020”, which cut some people off up to four days earlier than the legislation allowed.[2]
So the margin was there in the law. The system had nowhere to read it. Daniel was writing in the margin every time he rang, and nothing he said reached the rule that kept firing.
The scheme has now restarted. The department says it has fixed the problems through “IT system changes, system testing, improved participant communications and additional training for decision-makers”.[2] Advocates say they haven’t been shown evidence that the issues are fixed. Asked about it, one said: “None. None whatsoever.”[2] More than 50,000 people are being invited to apply for compensation.[2]
I can’t tell from the outside whether the fixes work. But I notice that none of them is a person with the power to look at a case like Daniel’s and say: stop, this is wrong.
[1] : “Nowhere to Scribble in the Margin”, Ground Truth, 28 October 2026.
[2] : “Centrelink brings back controversial welfare compliance regime”, ABC News, 28 October 2026.