[HN Gopher] Australia's great example of government using techno...
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Australia's great example of government using technology found
crude and cruel
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-07-08 15:08 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| its-summertime wrote:
| Absurdity in the lack of testing. I know it probably wasn't the
| fault of the implementers, but the management above them, but
| gosh, "move fast and break [people]" is not how financial
| software should be made.
|
| There was pre-existing systems, could have just ran it side-by-
| side to see if it agreed with the old methods.
|
| With how completely avoidable this result was, with people
| raising flags all the way through, I feel that the only
| conclusion is harming citizens must have been part of the
| intention.
| [deleted]
| danlindley wrote:
| > With how completely avoidable this result was, with people
| raising flags all the way through, I feel that the only
| conclusion is harming citizens must have been part of the
| intention.
|
| You are absolutely correct regarding their malice. The minister
| responsible for the implementation of the illegal scheme was
| former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who went so far as to
| purposefully mislead his cabinet. The former Prime Minister is
| despised by the general public at this point, and his will
| likely be recorded as the most cruel and criminal government in
| Australia's recent history.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| The Liberal party that devised this is roughly equivalent to the
| Republicans in the US.
|
| So of course, as good Christians, they used unfeeling machines to
| squeeze the poors for every cent.
|
| The lack of apparent remorse -- even faked -- is a big reason I
| voted against them this past election.
| version_five wrote:
| This isn't the 90s I don't know how anyone could consider the
| democrats to be the party representing the poor. Exploiting for
| political gain maybe, but liberal policies have completely
| screwed the poor. This is not just me trying to be partisan,
| there has been a global (edit: anglosphere) shift in liberals
| abandoning the working class for ideology and the role of what
| used to be pro worker pro union further left parties now being
| squarely on the right.
| bdzr wrote:
| > Fighting the debt notices proved extraordinary difficult, as
| the onus of proof required citizens to provide documents proving
| the debt was incorrect. As the program looked back at years of
| payment history, many simply couldn't find records of past income
| - or lack of it.
|
| How would you even prove a lack of income for a specific period
| of time (shorter than I assume annual tax reports)?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a pain in the ass.
|
| I had to deal with this for our little league, when the state
| decided circa 2009 that some sales tax filing was missing from
| 1977. It was a trivial amount that had ballooned to 5 figures
| with fees, penalty and interest. Fortunately the league had a
| long standing banking relationship and we were sort of able to
| assert that a payment was made.
|
| But in the end, only loud complaints to legislators settled the
| matter.
| zgluck wrote:
| As far as I can tell, roughly speaking the same thing was
| implemented in the 1960s in Sweden. Correctly.
|
| It does of course make it a lot easier when there's a central
| database with unique identifiers
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Swed...)
| identifying individuals.
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| The identifiers weren't the (technical) problem. It was that
| the taxation office collected information on an annual basis
| whereas the benefits law is based on fortnightly income. Of
| course, the real problem was that a single APS4 had vastly more
| moral fibre and leadership quality than the Minister,
| Secretary, and Deputy Secretary put together.
| someNameIG wrote:
| > It was that the taxation office collected information on an
| annual basis whereas the benefits law is based on fortnightly
| income
|
| It could have worked if it had human review after the system
| flagged it. Instead the debt was sent out automatically and
| it was a guilty until proven innocent thing.
|
| The people setting up the system knew it was wrong and
| illegal but they didn't care as they liked using the poor as
| a revenue raiser, and politically the "dole bludgers" are a
| good target.
| pmontra wrote:
| > APS4
|
| Australian Public Service employee, level 4? (googled it but
| a bit unsure)
| jen729w wrote:
| Correct. Low-level, you start at APS1 and APS6 is the top
| of the 'not an executive' ladder.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The real problem is that there will never be any consequences
| for the Minister, Secretary, and Deputy Secretary.
|
| For them, it was an excellent program that burnished their
| resumes and gave their brands a bit of "tough on the
| freeloaders" style. It was an excellent decision for them to
| have made, and if other officials now or in the future are
| confronted by a similar choice, in terms of their own
| personal benefit it would be an excellent decision for them
| to make again.
| zgluck wrote:
| > It was that the taxation office collected information on an
| annual basis whereas the benefits law is based on fortnightly
| income.
|
| And that is a problem because...?
| [deleted]
| ImAnAmateur wrote:
| Because the Australian government averaged the yearly
| income to see if the average fortnight was below the mark.
| Instead of following the law which gave benefits to those
| who had low income for a brief period.
|
| This was not a software issue. This was a willful top-down
| policy choice to use bad math. (At least, so the article
| says. I don't live in Australia.)
| zethex wrote:
| What was also amazing about it, is they would use your
| old address when you received welfare payments, but not
| update this from other systems such as the tax system.
| This meant that the debt letters were being sent to the
| wrong place, and then eventually handed over to debt
| collectors to chase. Credit scores were impacted because
| of this.
| zgluck wrote:
| So actually a matter of lack of unique id (and a properly
| registered address), then. Huh.
| llamaLord wrote:
| No you're not understanding. There is a unique ID, in
| this particular context it's called a CRN (customer
| reference number). Every person who receives social
| security in Australia has one and they're fixed for life.
|
| The lack of unique ID has nothing to do with this. This
| was government blatantly attacking poor people through
| willful mismanagement of an automated debt inferment
| system in conflict with the legal process through which
| that debt should have been calculated.
|
| They 100% knew what they were doing and did it
| deliberately.
| adrian_mrd wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "To understand why, consider someone who spent three months
| of the year receiving unemployment benefits while they
| searched for a job, then worked for nine months. The
| government considered their income for the entire year and
| averaged it, then assessed their eligibility for payments
| based on their average fortnightly earnings - not their
| income when they were out of work and therefore eligible
| for payments."
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's what the article is about, go read it
| [deleted]
| its-summertime wrote:
| https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Tax-file-number/What-is-a...
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-07-08 23:01 UTC)