How a long-forgotten episode involving the wrongful conviction of 15,000 Australians for unproven welfare offences prompted the creation of the Robodebt scheme

Income apportionment and the FTXB test case With lead author Dr Darren O’Donovan (senior lecturer in administrative law at La Trobe), I have authored a blog post on a significant test case recently heard by the President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Justice Kyrou, and two senior members, called FTXB; Secretary, Department of Social Services […]

Today on Welfare Law in Australia, Darren O’ Donovan analyses an internal document released under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) just a few days ago. That document reveals the inner working of Services Australia as it continues in its efforts to remediate a multi-decade calculation blunder likely affecting more than 100,000 people. What […]

On our welfare law substack Welfare Law in Australia, Dr Darren O’Donovan writes about the saddening fact that some one million Centrelink claims are at the moment awaiting assessment and determination. O’Donovan analyses the causes of this unsustainable backlog and the way it might be solved.

I recently spoke on a panel of three at the second annual Australian Progressive Legal Studies Conference. The theme of the conference was ‘Law and Class in the 21st Century: Australia and Beyond.’
The roundtable comprised Scarlet Wilcock (University of Sydney Law School), Asher Wolf (independent activist) and me. It was focused on robodebt. The text of my address is below.

In late November, I presented a paper via video link to the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Heath Law (AABHL) on ‘risk-based regulation.’ The abstract for that paper was as follows: What risk? A critical analysis of risk-based regulation of therapeutic goods, from stem cell medicine to osseointegration devices Therapeutic goods (medicines, biologicals and devices) […]

Legal errors impacting those entitled to social security benefits continue to arise in Australia

On 2 August 2023, the Commonwealth Ombudsman published a terse report outlining its findings after an investigation into the lawfulness of ‘income apportioning’ — a method of debt calculation used by Australian welfare agencies DHS and DSS since at least 2003 (ie, for more than 17 years). As the Report states, this process, as it […]