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	400,000 Australians on welfare were illegally issued with debt notices by ACOSS, Guardian Australia, EU Observer, agencies   Nov. 2020 (ABC News)   Over 400,000 vulnerable Australians issued false and illegal debt notices by Government.   The robodebt scheme will cost the Australian Government at least $1.2 billion after it settled a class action. The scheme used data from the tax office and Centrelink to automatically raise debts on welfare recipients, debts which in many cases didn't exist.   Laura Tingle (Chief Political Reporter): For years, the government defended robodebt despite concerns the system was unlawful.   Prof. Terry Carney, University of Sydney: It's the conduct that you would expect of a tin pot third world country administration.   Laura Tingle: As debt collectors chased down welfare recipients, including pensioners, the disabled and even the deceased, it was clear that the Government automated system was generating debts that didn't exist.   Penny Cahalan: You can't just tell people they owe thousands of dollars without providing any actual proof.   Katherine Boyle, Welfare Rights Centre: It's a nightmare of a system for most people to try and navigate. They're being encouraged to agree to what are potentially wildly inaccurate debts, if the debts exist at all.   Laura Tingle: The scheme was found to be unlawful and earlier this year the scheme was overhauled. Now, over 400,000 Australians will receive compensation as well as having invalid debts repaid or forgiven.. The Federal Government's made this settlement without admitting any actual liability.. One of the extraordinary things about this case is people say, "Well, is the minister accountable?" But there are at least five ministers who've been involved in the administration of this scheme, including the Prime Minister.   Australian Council of Social Service CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie:   “We need an independent, arms-length inquiry to establish accountability for this extraordinary abuse of government power inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people around Australia.   “Robodebt caused untold stress and trauma for people and their families. We all need an assurance that a terrible scheme like Robodebt can never be repeated. We also need people responsible to be held to account in an open and transparent manner”.   http://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/ http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/law-crime/2023/03/11/robo-debt-final-week-it-served-them-right-did-it#mtr http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2023/march/rick-morton/robodebt-and-empathy-bypass#mtr http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/tag/robo-debt http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/11/robodebt-five-years-of-lies-mistakes-and-failures-that-caused-a-18bn-scandal http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/royal-commission-into-robodebt http://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-11/robodebt-scheme-government-royal-commission-fraud/102074840 http://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/shameful-chapter-restitution-but-not-justice-from-robodebt-class-action-ruling/ http://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/robodebt-royal-commission-must-deliver-answers-accountability-and-protections/ http://povertyandinequality.acoss.org.au/   $1.2 billion-dollar robodebt settlement reveals massive scale of Government welfare debt crackdown disaster, by Luke Henriques-Gomes. (Guardian News)   In March 2017 Alan Tudge, then the human services minister, was under pressure over a different scandal. Fresh from releasing the personal information of a debt recipient who had written an article critical of the robodebt scheme, and threatening so-called welfare cheats with jail, Tudge told the ABC’s Fran Kelly that critics who believed the program was flawed had a “philosophical objection to widespread compliance checks”.   Despite the bluster, what few aside from those inside Tudge’s department knew was that the government was already receiving warnings about the legality of the Coalition’s chief welfare crackdown measure.   And they went beyond the initial complaints of community campaigners, welfare groups and early critics in the parliament, including the independent MP Andrew Wilkie, the Greens’ Rachel Siewert and Labor’s Murray Watt.   On Monday, on the first day of a class action trial into the robodebt scandal, the saga finally came to its apparent conclusion, as the commonwealth government agreed to a $1.2bn settlement with 400,000 victims of the scheme – perhaps one of the biggest and most expensive policy fiascos of a generation.   The deal negotiated by the law firm Gordon Legal includes $112m in additional compensation on top of previous commonwealth announcements.   Centrelink’s income compliance program, which ran from 2015 to November 2019, forced some victims to pay unlawful welfare debts in the tens of thousands of dollars.   Some were pursued relentlessly by privately contracted debt collectors, were homeless, suffering poor mental health or had serious disabilities. There have been reports of suicides linked to the scheme.   The settlement also speaks to the way the government has handled this saga from day one. It spares the government two weeks of potentially embarrassing documentary evidence about, as Labor’s Bill Shorten put it, “who knew what when”.   Tudge, for example, was named in Gordon Legal’s submissions as either knowing the scheme was unlawful or being “recklessly indifferent to it”. (Those claims were denied by the commonwealth in pre-trial hearings and the government accepted no liability or knowledge in the agreed settlement.)   When Tudge gave his interview to Kelly in March 2017, the government is said to have already lost four robodebt decisions at the first tier of the administrative appeals tribunal. Though the claim will now not be tested by the court, Gordon Legal alleged there were at least another 72 tribunal decisions that “set aside” robodebts. The overwhelming majority took place in 2017, when Tudge was the minister.   These decisions were never made public, and despite the commonwealth’s obligations as a model litigant, not once did the government appeal a case to the tribunal’s second tier to clarify the law. The second tier publishes its judgments.   Despite the legal doubts, the scheme rolled on. Centrelink continued regularly garnisheeing people’s tax returns, including a homeless woman who spoke to Guardian Australia. The estates of more than 3,000 people are among those now being refunded the unlawful debts.   Terry Carney, who wrote at least five of the AAT decisions, abruptly lost his position at the tribunal in 2017 after four decades. Guardian Australia revealed in 2018 that Carney’s view that the scheme was unlawful.   Stuart Robert became the government services minister in May 2019, a few months after Victoria Legal Aid finally launched a federal court test case against the scheme.   Early in the proceedings, the debt owed by the applicant in the case was wiped. The government then told the court that there was no longer a case to answer. Undeterred, Legal Aid recruited a second applicant.   In November Robert abruptly announced what he called a “refinement” to the scheme, scrapping the averaging of annual Australian Taxation Office pay data to issue debts. Robert claimed only a “small cohort” of people had been issued a debt based solely on income averaging. A week later, the government settled its case with Victoria Legal Aid. The “small cohort” described by Robert was in fact 300,000 debts unlawfully recouped by the government.   In purely financial terms, the “refinement” has cost $721m in refunds, $400m in debts the government has been forced to wipe, $112m in compensation and at least $600m in costs administering the scheme. All for a program that was supposed to save taxpayers money. The human cost is yet to be fully accounted for. http://bit.ly/3kA9xLy http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/centrelink-debt-recovery/inequality/inequality-in-australia-2020-part-2-who-is-affected-and-why/   Nov. 2020   Royal Commission details violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability in Australia.   People with disability in Australia are experiencing violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation across all aspects of their lives, including in education, health care and justice settings, and in their homes, workplaces and communities, the Disability Royal Commission’s Interim Report says.   The report says people with disability experience attitudinal, environmental, institutional and communication barriers to achieving inclusion within Australian society.   It shows that a great deal needs to be done to ensure that the human rights of people with disability are respected and that Australia becomes a truly inclusive society.   The 561-page document details the experiences of many people with disability, as well as the reasons they are exposed to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.   The report records the high rates of violence towards people with disability. The most recent data from 2016 shows that almost 2.4 million people with disability aged 18–64 years (almost two in three) had experienced violence in their lifetime. In a 12-month period, people with disability are twice as likely as people without disability to experience violence.   The Royal Commission has held seven public hearings and published nine issues papers and six research reports since it was established in April 2019, although the COVID-19 pandemic which forced public hearings to be held online. It was set up in response to community concerns and is investigating, among other things:   Preventing and better protecting people with disability from experiencing violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. Achieving best practice in reporting, investigating and responding to violence against, and abuse, neglect and exploitation of, people with disability. Promoting a more inclusive society that supports the independence of people with disability and their right to live free from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.   “In the past 50 years, progress has been made in addressing the harsh - at times cruel and inhuman - treatment of people with disability,” the Chair of the Commission Ronald Sackville QC said.   “Many horrific institutions have been closed and people with disability now have a voice through their representative organisations. The National Disability Insurance Scheme has been established. But welcome as those changes are, a great deal remains to be done.   The report says First Nations people face double discrimination because they are both First Nations and a person with disability; they are more likely to experience harm than the general population and they lack culturally appropriate services and supports.   “First Nations people with disability have told the Royal Commission about being bullied or abused by people in positions of power. It has also heard that the fear of child removal and subsequent institutionalisation is a particular barrier for First Nations people with disability accessing services,” Mr Sackville said.   Chapter 17 of the Interim Report ‘Emerging themes and key issues’ discusses key areas that have emerged as particularly significant to the independence of people with disability and their right to live free from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.   They include choice and control; attitudes towards disability; segregation and exclusion; restrictive practices; access to services and supports; advocacy and representation; oversight and complaints; data; and funding.   The report notes there is no nationally consistent data on neglect or exploitation of people with disability, and no comprehensive data on experiences of people with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, people from the LGBT community, children and young people, First Nations children, and people experiencing homelessness.   In Australia, 4.4 million people live with disability, with approximately 80 per cent of disability being acquired in a person’s life.   Australia ranks 21st out of 29 countries in the OECD for employment participation for people with disability, and last for people with disability living in poverty.   The report points out that accurate and reliable data is needed to set goals, measure progress, hold governments and other organisations to account, and determine whether Australian governments are meeting their obligations under the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).   Aug. 2021   Computer says No: How the EU's AI laws cause new injustice. (EU Observer, agencies)   Big Tech companies pushing for self-regulation, while their algorithms create new injustice in European public services, investigation by Alina Yanchur, Camille Schyns, Greta Rosen Fondahn, Sarah Pilz.   When Roger Derikx applied for childcare benefits, he thought he would be receiving money - not losing it.   Derikx, 46 years old, was asked to repay the Dutch government €68,000. The problem: he was never told why he had to return the benefits, to which he was entitled. Authorities repossessed his car, and took a 40 percent cut of his salary for years.   "You have two little children, and you want to give them everything," Derikx said, "but every time they ask something, you have to say 'no' - that's hard."   Derikx was one of 26,000 parents accused of making fraudulent benefit claims by the Dutch tax authority, which used an algorithm for fraud detection. The system was "unlawful and discriminatory," an official investigation found, eventually leading Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte to resign earlier this year.   For Derikx, the investigation came too late. The financial hardship took such a toll on his marriage that he ended up getting a divorce. "That's a big price," Derikx said.   The child benefits scandal in the Netherlands is not unique. Reports of abuse have surfaced across Europe. Danish authorities also used artificial intelligence to identify children in "vulnerable families" that disproportionately targeted parents with foreign origins.   And the Netherlands, one of Europe's frontrunners in this field, used algorithms to create risk profiles of children under the age of 12.   Critics have long advocated against such uses of AI. In January, 61 advocacy organisations sent an open letter to the EU demanding "red lines" on AI applications that threatened fundamental rights.   Meanwhile, industry representatives argued that regulating AI would stifle innovation. Upon taking office, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had made regulating artificial intelligence a political priority, and the EU claimed to seek compromise between addressing the risks and protecting innovation.   By April 2021, the EU Commission announced a long-awaited proposal to regulate artificial intelligence.   Data compiled for this investigation shows that commission officials logged 152 official lobby meetings on AI over the time period from December 2019 until August 2021.   Corporations and business associations accounted for over 100, or two-thirds, of those meetings; less than one third was with civil society, academics, and trade unions..   http://euobserver.com/investigations/152695 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55674146 http://edri.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/EDRi-open-letter-AI-red-lines.pdf http://edri.org/ http://www.accessnow.org/   Oct. 2019   Digital welfare states and human rights. Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.   The digital welfare state is either already a reality or emerging in many countries across the globe. In these states, systems of social protection and assistance are increasingly driven by digital data and technologies that are used to automate, predict, identify, surveil, detect, target and punish.   In the present report, the irresistible attractions for Governments to move in this direction are acknowledged, but the grave risk of stumbling, zombie-like, into a digital welfare dystopia is highlighted.   It is argued that big technology companies (frequently referred to as “big tech”) operate in an almost human rights-free zone, and that this is especially problematic when the private sector is taking a leading role in designing, constructing and even operating significant parts of the digital welfare state.   It is recommended in the report that, instead of obsessing about fraud, cost savings, sanctions, and market-driven definitions of efficiency, the starting point should be on how welfare budgets could be transformed through technology to ensure a higher standard of living for the vulnerable and disadvantaged: http://undocs.org/A/74/493
	Cambodia: ICJ and 64 organizations call for immediate withdrawal of Draft Law on Public Order by International Commission of Jurists, agencies   Aug. 13, 2020   Today, the ICJ and 64 civil society organizations jointly called on the Royal Government of Cambodia (“RGC”) to discard the draft Law on Public Order (“draft law”) which, if adopted, would breach Cambodia’s international legal obligations.   The draft law aims to regulate public spaces and public behavior within those spaces, covering aesthetics, sanitation, cleanliness, noise, and social values, all under the broad aim of maintaining “public order”.   It sets out a number of specific activities that are prohibited, lists a range of penalties that may be imposed for violations, and grants unfettered enforcement powers to authorities across all levels of government, with the proclaimed objective of creating “a more civilized society”.   The organizations expressed concern that the draft law contains multiple overbroad and arbitrary provisions which violate numerous human rights protections enshrined in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia and human rights treaties to which Cambodia is party, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.   Amidst an ongoing crackdown on fundamental freedoms in Cambodia, a number of existing laws already grant overbroad and unfettered powers to the RGC and are regularly deployed abusively to undermine human rights. Adoption of this draft Law on Public Order would serve to facilitate a further deterioration of the human rights situation in Cambodia.   The draft law disproportionately impacts certain marginalized groups, in contravention of anti-discrimination guarantees protected in the Constitution, ICCPR, ICESCR, and other binding human rights instruments. It negatively impacts economically disadvantaged members of society, as well as those who work in the informal economy, many of whom rely on activities prohibited by the draft lawfor their livelihoods.   For example, Art. 11 prohibits “selling productson the roadsides that can affect public order”, a common source of income in Cambodia, while Art. 37(i) prohibits “all forms of begging”. Art.11 also effectively prohibits homelessness, by banning the use of public space for “temporary shelters” without approval from the authorities.   Everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living, and Cambodia currently lacks a system of social protection which can guarantee this right for the people most at risk in Cambodian society. Rather than supporting marginalized members of society, the draft law has the potential to further entrench poverty and economic inequality.   * The joint statement is available in English here: http://bit.ly/3hsqcQv   http://www.icj.org/cambodia-icj-and-64-organizations-call-for-immediate-withdrawal-of-draft-law-on-public-order/ http://www.icj.org/category/news/ Visit the related web page
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