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Reposted by Liz Crash

Tom Studans @maximumwelfare.bsky.social · 4h

We're meant to have these things called the Australian Federal Police and also the National Anti-Corruption Commission who are both certainly authorised to act in the scenario where a government department is recovering >$3.5m a year in fraud without even really actively looking.

Antipoverty Centre @antipovertycentre.org · 4h

Lmao the employment department has recovered 10.6 MILLION from providers due to fraud tip-offs over 3 years, and not shut down a single provider.

Reminder: They spend 4 BILLION A YEAR on this system, which is about 25% of how much they spend on JobSeeker payments each year.

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 8m

oh no

Reposted by Liz Crash

Tom Studans @maximumwelfare.bsky.social · 31m

You will be able to see @chrisrudge.bsky.social & others interviewed about this on ABC 730 in a few minutes.

Hopefully we can finally have some mainstream discussion of the subject of the report, being the unlawful cancellations of the Centrelink payments of hundreds of thousands of recipients.

Tom Studans @maximumwelfare.bsky.social · 3d

#BREAKING 🚨 Deloitte to refund government, admits using AI in $440k report into mutual obligations issues.

Fake quotes from Federal Court case that ended Robodebt deleted from new report in Friday DEWR dump.

📰 AFR

✍️ @paulkarp.bsky.social

✍️ @edmundtadros.bsky.social

🗣️ @chrisrudge.bsky.social

HEADLINE: Deloitte to refund government, admits AI errors in $440k report

Deloitte Australia will issue a partial refund to the federal government after admitting that artificial intelligence had been used in the creation of a $440,000 report littered with errors including three nonexistent academic references and a made-up quote from a Federal Court judgement.

A new version of the report for the Department of Workplace Relations (DEWR) was quietly uploaded to the department’s website on Friday, ahead of a long weekend across much of Australia. It features more than a dozen deletions of nonexistent references and footnotes, a rewritten reference list, and corrections to multiple typographic errors.

(photo of Deloitte Australia HQ) Deloitte Australia has made almost $25 million worth of deals with the Department of Workplace Relations since 2021. Photographer Dion Georgopoulos

The first version of the report, about the IT system used to automate penalties in the welfare system such as pauses on the dole, was published in July. Less than a month later, Deloitte was forced to investigate the report after University of Sydney academic Dr Christopher Rudge highlighted multiple errors in the document.

At the time, Rudge speculated that the errors may have been caused by what is known as “hallucinations” by generative AI. This is where the technology responds to user queries by inventing references and quotes. Deloitte declined to comment.

The incident is embarrassing for Deloitte as it earns a growing part of its $US70.5 billion ($107 billion) in annual global revenue by providing advice and training clients and executives about AI. The firm also boasts about its widespread use of the technology within its global operations, while emphasising the need to always have humans review any output of AI.

SUBHEADING: Deleted references, footnotes

The revised report has deleted a dozen references to two nonexistent reports by Professor Lisa Burton Crawford, a law professor at the University of Sydney, that were included in the first version. Two references to a nonexistent report by Professor Björn Regnell, of Lund University in Sweden, were also deleted in the new report.

Also deleted was a made up reference to a court decision in a leading robo-debt case, Deanna Amato v Commonwealth.

The new report has also deleted a reference to “Justice Davis” (a misspelling of Justice Jennifer Davies) and the made-up quote from the nonexistent paragraphs 25 and 26 in the judgement: “The burden rests on the decision-maker to be satisfied on the evidence that the debt is owed. A person’s statutory entitlements cannot lawfully be reduced based on an assumption unsupported by evidence.”

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 14m

Targeted Compliance Framework, aka “mutual obligations” enforcement

Reposted by Liz Crash

Antipoverty Centre @antipovertycentre.org · 4h

Lmao the employment department has recovered 10.6 MILLION from providers due to fraud tip-offs over 3 years, and not shut down a single provider.

Reminder: They spend 4 BILLION A YEAR on this system, which is about 25% of how much they spend on JobSeeker payments each year.

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Tom Studans @maximumwelfare.bsky.social · 3h

There is no accountability in this system. There is none. We have thousands of pages of evidence to demonstrate the Obligations were never Mutual, and you cannot make them so.

bsky.app/profile/anti...

Antipoverty Centre @antipovertycentre.org · 3h

30 significant breach notices issued to providers since 2022.

For some reason, only 2 of those were in the past 2 years.

Somehow zero providers have been removed from the system.

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Tom Studans @maximumwelfare.bsky.social · 3h

• Fraud by providers—a federal crime—first exposed by the ABC a decade ago
• DEWR policy of settling for repayment/cancelling contracts already old news when I first met their officials in 2018. First thing I directly asked of any public servant.
• Department's name has changed THREE times since.

Department of Jobs and Small Business

Formed 20 December 2017

Dissolved 29 May 2019

Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business

Formed 29 May 2019

Dissolved 1 February 2020

Department of Education, Skills and Employment

Formed 1 February 2020

Dissolved 1 July 2022

Department of Employment and Workplace Relations

Formed 1 July 2022

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Guardian Australia @australia.theguardian.com · 4h

Melbourne’s skyscraper falcon chicks set for first flight as livestream audience becomes ‘permanent watch parties’

Tens of thousands watch online as city’s beloved peregrine offspring prepare for first plunge * Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here Thousands of viewers have already tuned in to see a fluffy trio of falcon chicks born atop a Melbourne skyscraper, but the real cliffhanger is yet to come. In their lofty nest on top of a Melbourne skyscraper, three peregrine falcon chicks hatched from three eggs, with the first tiny beak appearing on 30 September. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 4h

in clinical terms it probably amounted to a Trauma

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 4h

it didn’t come out of nowhere and it hasn’t disappeared into nothing!

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 4h

i will note though that the Trump Effect is what got Starmer elected and it hasn’t done a lot for the UK

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Antipoverty Centre @antipovertycentre.org · 4h

Senator Kovacic now asking about complaints about providers.

Time to hear DEWR crow about how the "small" number of complaints (6000) shows that people are happy ... ignoring all the barriers to lodging a complaint.

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 4h

obviously it’s great that many people were outraged about Robodebt. i particularly enjoyed getting refunded. but it’s frustrating that Robodebt is often framed as something sui generis, that that outrage isn’t really transferring onto the welfare adminstration as a whole

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 4h

yeah the Trump effect

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 4h

man couldn’t be bothered waiting for godot even though he was sure to come today or possibly tomorrow :///

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Antipoverty Centre @antipovertycentre.org · 4h

Senator Jess Walsh says a payment suspension is about trying to get people to re-engage ... totally failing to acknowledge that a re-engagement requirement IS PUNISHMENT if you didn't do anything wrong in the fucking first place!!! Which is what is happening at a vast scale!!

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Antipoverty Centre @antipovertycentre.org · 5h

The DEWR secretary says it has "no impact at all" when a person has a payment suspension notice if they reverse it in 5 days ... ignoring the extraordinary stress, time wasting and hoop jumping needed to reverse a suspension.

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 5h

like, having $70 a fortnight docked from my payment because of a fake debt wasn‘t great. having 100% of my payment withheld because I was too disabled to make money for my JSP was a lot worse and before I got on the DSP it happened all the time

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 5h

just in my personal subjective opinion having a $10k Robodebt doesn’t even crack the top 10 illegal and degrading things Centrelink has done to me. probably 9 out of 10 of those were to do with the TCF

Jeremy Poxon @jeremypoxon.bsky.social · 6h

Here is a current DIRECTOR within the Department effectively blowing the whistle to Deloitte that the system doesn't demonstrate "natural justice"

The Robodebt vibes here are off the charts and I'm begging media to cover this

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Jeremy Poxon @jeremypoxon.bsky.social · 6h

For the first time, the Deloitte report also publicly maps out the business rules of the jobseeker punishment system

Here's the tech the government inflicts on poor ppl every day - everyone is subject to it: single mums, ppl with disabilities, homeless ppl

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Jeremy Poxon @jeremypoxon.bsky.social · 6h

Here is a current DIRECTOR within the Department effectively blowing the whistle to Deloitte that the system doesn't demonstrate "natural justice"

The Robodebt vibes here are off the charts and I'm begging media to cover this

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Jeremy Poxon @jeremypoxon.bsky.social · 6h

Now that the Deloitte report, about the government's unlawful administration of mutual obligations, is making international headlines, it's worth looking at what's actually in it (apart from AI slop) and WHY it was actually commissioned

A thread👇

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Reposted by Liz Crash

Nobody Deserves Poverty @nobodyinpoverty.bsky.social · 7h

Hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients lose access to payments every year, and Labor have said they can’t even say if it’s lawful. - @pennyallmanpayne.com

To quote @amyremeikis.bsky.social - SIIIGGGGHHHHHH

live.australiainstitute.org.au/2025/10/aust...

39 minutes ago 11.48 AEDT

SIIIGGGGHHHHHH
Thee has been a lot of reporting on the Deloitte report which was found to have used AI and most of the reporting has focused on that, rather than what the report was actually about.

Which was the Targeted Compliance Framework. You probably know that as mutual obligations. The report was about the issues with the automated system being used to cancel people’s welfare payments. You may remember from episodes such as ROBODEBT and EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO HAS CONTACT WITH THIS SYSTEM TELLING YOU, that this is illegal and this has the potential to cause some pretty major problems for the government. And right now, it is causing major problems for people who are being made to fulfil demands from an illegal and immoral system just to have their below-poverty-line payments reinstated/continue.

That’s a pretty major problem, Australia. And not a new one. The only people benefiting from Australia’s mutual obligation program are the owners of job provider agencies who are paid billions of dollars to set menial and often degrading ‘duties’ for jobseekers to meet so they can maybe continue to pay their rent that week.

So not only is the consulting firm which was paid to do a report into the issues with an automated system which is causing immense harm to jobseekers and returned a report riddled with errors because it used automation to complete that report still getting paid, the government is yet to address the substance of the report.

Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne said

Hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients lose access to payments every year, and Labor have said they can’t even say if it’s lawful.”

These payments can be the difference between food on the table or going hungry. If Labor can’t defend the system they should end the TCF and stop suspending payments immediately.”

Under questioning in senate estimates from Greens senators, Murray Watt has agreed that Deloitte should apologise.

Great.

Let’s see whether the government apologises for keeping mutual obligations and welfare suspensions in place at the later session of estimates which will deal with social services.

Bluesky

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 5h

nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!

Lux Alptraum @luxalptraum.com · 11h

TFW you paid $1400 to see Beckett’s most famous work without knowing anything about it

One Star Review of Waiting for Godot on Broadway
I recently attended Waiting for Godot on Broadway and spent over $1,400 for two Row C seats (103 and 104). I'm a longtime admirer of Broadway productions and even hold a season pass for Shea's Performing Arts Theatre, so I came in with genuine enthusiasm and high expectations. Unfortunately, this show was unlike anything ! have ever experienced —and not in a good way.
What I encountered was not the artistry, music, or emotional storytelling I usually associate with Broadway, but instead what felt like an endless cycle of nonsensical conversation between characters who seemed trapped in their own madness. I tried-truly tried-to find meaning, symbolism, or even a thread of emotional resonance. I stayed through the first half hoping the second would offer clarity. But by intermission, it was clear: this was a waste of both time and money.
Keanu Reeves is an actor I respect greatly, but I cannot fathom why he would agree to participate in such a disjointed, inaccessible production. His talent was lost in a performance that defied reason rather than provoked insight.
To anyone considering attending: unless you are drawn to highly abstract, nearly incomprehensible theater, I strongly caution you against this show. For the average, educated, thoughtful theatergoer, it is far more frustrating than fulfilling. In my opinion, this was the single most disappointing Broadway experience I've ever had - an unfortunate waste of money and, more importantly, of time.

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Liz Crash @lizcrash.bsky.social · 5h

unbelievable that she’s spending her 111st birthday in prison. shame!

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