Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven Am.
Speaker 1: It was twenty twenty when the government first discovered that
Speaker 1: a glitch in its systems was wrongfully kicking welfare recipients
Speaker 1: off their payments, but rather than fixing the error than
Speaker 1: and there, the department did nothing about it for three years.
Speaker 1: In that time, ten people died. Whether their deaths were
Speaker 1: the result of suicide or destitution from having their payments cut,
Speaker 1: Services Australia won't say. Today Senior reporter for the Saturday Paper,
Speaker 1: Rick Morton with his exclusive story about the ministers who
Speaker 1: failed to act protecting the interests of private companies over
Speaker 1: the vulnerable. It's Wednesday, February twenty six, So Rick, tell
Speaker 1: me where this story begins for you.
Speaker 2: So I've been covering this for almost a year now
Speaker 2: and there was always something kind of fishy about it,
Speaker 2: because you know, like in January last year. So in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, the Department of Employment they kind of
Speaker 2: sheepishly admit that there's this problem with the IT system
Speaker 2: that deals with employment services, right and they say, oh,
Speaker 2: the IT system stuffed up. There was a bug and
Speaker 2: it's affected about one thousand people who were hit with
Speaker 2: financial penalties or had their welfare payment cut off entirely
Speaker 2: because of this IT system. But then by the time
Speaker 2: I was writing about it in July, the number of
Speaker 2: people affected is revised up again, so now it's about
Speaker 2: thirteen hundred people. And then come November, this source from
Speaker 2: the government says they're about to announce this new issue.
Speaker 2: And then also, by the way, all those IT glitches,
Speaker 2: the numbers that are affected by those has gone up again. Now, well,
Speaker 2: all of this is happening. People of course, are watching
Speaker 2: it very carefully, and one of those is this guy
Speaker 2: called Jeremy Poxen, who's a welfare rights Activisty has been
Speaker 2: around for ages now, really and he knew about these
Speaker 2: issues of his because there was bits and pieces being
Speaker 2: fed out in the media, and so Jeremy says, well,
Speaker 2: I don't think they're being forthcoming. I'm going to FOI,
Speaker 2: you know, Lodger freedom of information request?
Speaker 1: Right? What did that uncover?
Speaker 2: So the briefings he got back, it's fair to say
Speaker 2: they were quite shocking because there were eighty pages in
Speaker 2: there of ministery or briefs to both Tony Burke, the
Speaker 2: former Employment Minister, and the current Employment Minister. Murray Watt
Speaker 2: from the Department of Employment about the issues with the
Speaker 2: IT system, and it showed that the problem was first
Speaker 2: identified in April twenty twenty and the department just didn't
Speaker 2: do anything about it for.
Speaker 3: Another three years.
Speaker 1: Okay, and so what was the actual problem? What was
Speaker 1: the kind of technical glitch or whatever in the system
Speaker 1: that had caused all of this to happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, let me just start by explaining this is
Speaker 2: all about Workforce Australia, right. So Ever since Howard privatized
Speaker 2: employment service providers, the government has paid private, nonprofit and
Speaker 2: for profit providers to administer a compliance regime around you know,
Speaker 2: if you're on a job seeker payment, you have to
Speaker 2: do mutual obligations, so you either have to do work
Speaker 2: for the doll or you have to do some kind
Speaker 2: of training or being study. And if you don't, and
Speaker 2: if you don't look for work a certain number of
Speaker 2: jobs every month, then you're going to get penalized.
Speaker 4: Let's learn more about the targeted Compliance framework.
Speaker 2: And in twenty eighteen the Coalition introduces the new Targeted
Speaker 2: Compliance Framework and it is an insanely complicated.
Speaker 3: Traffic light system. I guess is the best way.
Speaker 2: To describe what it is about how to penalize people
Speaker 2: who are not meeting their mutual obligations, who don't have
Speaker 2: a reasonable excuse. In the words of the Department, your.
Speaker 4: Job plan will include your mutual obligation requirements tailored to
Speaker 4: your individual circumstances. You need to meet and report on
Speaker 4: these requirements, including meeting your monthly points target on the
Speaker 4: Workforce Australia website.
Speaker 3: It's a rout Goldberg machine.
Speaker 2: It's like if this, then that, and if you don't
Speaker 2: do this, then you spend ninety a penalty zone, and
Speaker 2: if you're in the penalty zone for so long, then
Speaker 2: all of these other things happen. It is so complicated,
Speaker 2: a little bit of humans oversight, but mostly it's.
Speaker 3: An automated IT system.
Speaker 2: And so by the time the department actually realized that
Speaker 2: people were being cut off welfare or they were being
Speaker 2: financially penalized, there were thirteen hundred of them in the
Speaker 2: end who were hit with fines, who were cut off
Speaker 2: from their payments, and that happened three thousand, four hundred
Speaker 2: different times.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, so there is this kind of technical stuff
Speaker 1: up in twenty twenty that the department finds out about,
Speaker 1: but doesn't do anything about for three years. In that time,
Speaker 1: there are thirteen hundred people approximately cut off their welfare payments.
Speaker 1: So at what point does the department decide to do
Speaker 1: something about this.
Speaker 2: So that thirteen hundred, you know, those thirteen hundred.
Speaker 3: People who were affected.
Speaker 2: That happened mostly later on after many years, and the
Speaker 2: department only noticed it again in twenty twenty three, you know,
Speaker 2: I think it was actually around August, and then by
Speaker 2: septemb they're briefing, we need to fix this thing. And
Speaker 2: by October they've released the first fix for this IT glitch.
Speaker 3: That was first identified in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: The problem is that fix created another problem trying to
Speaker 2: fix the first problem, which had almost exactly the same effect,
Speaker 2: and hit another seventy three people with wrong financial penalties
Speaker 2: or cancelation of payments that should never have happened. And
Speaker 2: in the course of briefing their ministers at that point
Speaker 2: was Tony Burke, they said that, you know, there might
Speaker 2: be an additional fifty five bugs. Since I'm quoting from
Speaker 2: THEFI briefing, our initial analysis suggests the majority of these
Speaker 2: bugs will not have significant impact on penalties. The number
Speaker 2: of participants impacted by all bugs is still under investigation,
Speaker 2: and that's a very important point because they don't actually
Speaker 2: know right.
Speaker 1: So at this point, the Minister, though, is being warned
Speaker 1: that there are serious problems. I suppose, so does he
Speaker 1: or the Department at this point try and do anything
Speaker 1: to fix it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it would be unfair to say
Speaker 2: that the ministers are not concerned. So the Department and
Speaker 2: they're the ones who control the system, right, So they're
Speaker 2: briefing the government and in the briefing to what they say,
Speaker 2: literally I'm quoting it changes would likely require significant government investment.
Speaker 1: Well that makes sense because it sounds like it was
Speaker 1: very broken.
Speaker 2: It's very broken, and also we know that it is
Speaker 2: always an incredible cost. But in this case, the it
Speaker 2: is complicated, not because you know, we're trying to do
Speaker 2: quantum computing, but because the legislation is incredibly complicated. So
Speaker 2: when the Department of Employment was briefing Tony Burke on
Speaker 2: the IT clitch issue in a way that they could
Speaker 2: be sure that they wouldn't affect people unnecessarily, they came
Speaker 2: up with two options. Option A was to basically prevent
Speaker 2: people from attracting financial penalties or cancelations in the first place,
Speaker 2: just take them out of the penalty zone after so
Speaker 2: much time. The second option was to turn off what
Speaker 2: they called the penalty zone altogether, and they didn't want
Speaker 2: to do that because doing that would actually remove the
Speaker 2: threat of consequence. If you switch off consequences for people
Speaker 2: who don't engage, then suddenly they're not engaging with private
Speaker 2: employment service providers that the government pays about one and
Speaker 2: a half billion dollars a year in Workforce Australia to
Speaker 2: provide these services. And they said there was a financial
Speaker 2: viability problem if they turned that off, because suddenly these
Speaker 2: private operators would not be making any money from unemployed
Speaker 2: people and that was untenable.
Speaker 1: And so what of it? Can we go back to
Speaker 1: these people rick who were cut off from their payments,
Speaker 1: What do we know about what happened to them after that?
Speaker 2: So the government decides for people who were given financial penalties,
Speaker 2: which is you know, in some cases one week or
Speaker 2: two weeks of their payment, they can pay that back.
Speaker 2: They find those people in the system, they track them down,
Speaker 2: they give back.
Speaker 3: I think it's something like six hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: Dollars for the people who had their welfare payments canceled,
Speaker 2: they try and track them all down for a star
Speaker 2: there's forty one people.
Speaker 3: They can't get a hold of these fi brief in show.
Speaker 2: And also there are ten people who died after the
Speaker 2: welfare payments were canceled and before the government has been
Speaker 2: able to try and find them to pay the money back.
Speaker 2: Services Australia obviously learned that these people have died. We
Speaker 2: know that the glitch problem could only have led to
Speaker 2: cancelations after a long period of time, so they didn't
Speaker 2: die that long ago, and Services Australia won't tell me
Speaker 2: how they died, or whether they know how they died, or.
Speaker 3: If they even asked how they died. That's a problem.
Speaker 2: Because to me, there is at least the chance that
Speaker 2: maybe one of these people died because of something that
Speaker 2: happened with this system. We don't know the answer to
Speaker 2: that because they haven't investigated it.
Speaker 1: After the break, Is the system still broken? Where is
Speaker 1: the system at now?
Speaker 2: Rick?
Speaker 1: Because it sounds like at every term when the department
Speaker 1: did decide to try and do something about the problem,
Speaker 1: they only created more problems. So is it actually functioning
Speaker 1: correctly now?
Speaker 2: No, it's not so Just in generally. Just last month
Speaker 2: they had to pause mutual applications for two weeks because
Speaker 2: there was another IT glitch. I mean, there's an IT
Speaker 2: glitch every other Friday, and we know that they keep
Speaker 2: discovering these issues. Might not be the old ones, but
Speaker 2: there's new ones. And there's a separate issue now where
Speaker 2: they're going back to one thousand people, different people who
Speaker 2: had their welfare payments cut off because the delegate for
Speaker 2: the Secretary of the Department of Employment wasn't giving due
Speaker 2: discretion to whether people would be thrust into financial hardship.
Speaker 2: I mean, these are people who are living pretty tough
Speaker 2: lives and the people who are most likely to get
Speaker 2: in the penalty zone in this crazy system, people with
Speaker 2: a lot of comorbid things going on in their life.
Speaker 2: They might have mental health problems, they might be living
Speaker 2: in remote indigenous communities, they might be partially considered able
Speaker 2: to work because they've got a disability, but they're not
Speaker 2: on the DSP all of these things right, and so
Speaker 2: to have your payment canceled means in practice that you
Speaker 2: get cut off your only income support and you are
Speaker 2: forbidden from reapplying for at least four weeks. Now, even
Speaker 2: when I was earning money in my twenties. If I
Speaker 2: got cut off from my payment for a week, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have any money. I didn't have savings, I couldn't
Speaker 2: make rent. These are people who definitely don't have money
Speaker 2: in the bank. So no, the model, the system, the it,
Speaker 2: whether it's the I or the human oversight, none of
Speaker 2: it is up to scratch. And the only people that
Speaker 2: can order a stop to it are the ministers of
Speaker 2: the crown, and that has not been done.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me a bit more about that, then, because
Speaker 1: a lot of what you've uncovered has come through reporting
Speaker 1: and through this FOI freedom of freedom of Information request.
Speaker 1: But as you have continued to look into this, how
Speaker 1: would you characterize the official response that you've been getting
Speaker 1: from the department, from the minister.
Speaker 2: It's sheepish, is the best way to describe it. Where
Speaker 2: they know they've done something wrong, not deliberately, but the
Speaker 2: reaction to the errors that are being found could be
Speaker 2: characterized as kind of downplane what has happened, And so
Speaker 2: it feels a little bit like on the fourth and
Speaker 2: fifth and sixth occasion where they've found an error that
Speaker 2: you might want to start to consider, as is your
Speaker 2: obligation as a public servant with duties and responsibilities under
Speaker 2: the Act. As ministers who have the ultimate responsibility for
Speaker 2: these systems, you might want to actually consider stopping this system.
Speaker 2: All we have at the moment is they've stopped the
Speaker 2: bits that they literally cannot get away with not stopping.
Speaker 2: So they've paused cancelation of welfare payments. Great, automatically taking
Speaker 2: welfare recipients out of the penalty zone at ninety one days. Great,
Speaker 2: But they've kept everything else. And again they don't know
Speaker 2: what else the system is or is not getting right.
Speaker 2: They've paid more than half million dollars now to Deloitte
Speaker 2: to do an external assurance review, but again the system
Speaker 2: carries on its merry way, and the comb of Onbwardsman
Speaker 2: is now investigating. But explicitly in their response to me
Speaker 2: they said, we are not looking at, you know, whether
Speaker 2: employment Services is a good system all over. We're looking
Speaker 2: at whether the targeted compliance trainwork, which is a Coalition
Speaker 2: era policy, whether that's being implemented properly. And we had
Speaker 2: these very similar issues with Robodett, where the question was.
Speaker 3: Always so narrow.
Speaker 2: It was not whether this Robodet was illegal. It was
Speaker 2: not whether it was even moral. It was whether if
Speaker 2: the department had come up with a set of rules
Speaker 2: and procedures, were those rules and procedures being followed and
Speaker 2: implemented properly.
Speaker 3: That cuts out a lot of understanding from the problem, and.
Speaker 2: It will do so again in this case if you
Speaker 2: don't actually take a step back and go hang on
Speaker 2: a second. The IT system is not the diagnosis. It
Speaker 2: is a symptom of a wildly complicated, arcane, bureaucratic, and
Speaker 2: quite cruel system of compliance designed to force.
Speaker 3: People into jumping through these hoops, and so far no
Speaker 3: one's taken any action on that.
Speaker 4: Rick.
Speaker 2: Thank you for your time, Thanks for me, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, the Albanezi government has promised
Speaker 1: a mobile phone reception quote anywhere where Australians can see
Speaker 1: the sky. If re elected, Labour says it will introduce
Speaker 1: laws that require telcos to provide outdoor mobile coverage across
Speaker 1: all areas of Australia by twenty twenty seven, meaning an
Speaker 1: extra five million square kilometers of the country would gain service,
Speaker 1: and the Vatican says Pope Francis has shown slight improvement
Speaker 1: and has resumed some work as he battles double pneumonia
Speaker 1: and the onset of slight kidney failure. The eighty eight
Speaker 1: year old Pontiff was admitted to hospital in Rome on
Speaker 1: February fourteen after experiencing difficulty breathing. An unnamed Vatican official
Speaker 1: has told the media the pope is now eating normally
Speaker 1: and is alert and well oriented. I'm Ruby Jones. This
Speaker 1: is seven am. See tomorrow.