Social Security Appeals and Access to Justice: Learning from the robodebt controversy
How did a flawed interpretation of the Commonwealth’s debt-raising powers take hold and persist through four years of criticism? And what does the affair tell us about how internal and tribunal appeal mechanisms are functioning? While public discussion of the robodebt[ii] controversy has often focused on technology or algorithms, this article argues that it also represents a familiar tale of what occurs when we fail to promote access to justice. In an era where technology can facilitate the making of hundreds of thousands of decisions, the effective, prompt governance of legal interpretation has never been more important. Continue Reading
