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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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Alice Grundy @alicektg.bsky.social · 20d

It felt like Australian publishing was shrinking with mergers and the shock closure of Meanjin - waiting to see the full story behind that!

But there's a few new players bring fresh energy and new books in recent months.

With thanks to @jocaseau.bsky.social for excellent editing.

5 new Australian publishers are making defiant, weird, grass-roots books

The launch of 5 new Australian book publishers is good news, for once. Meet Perentie Press, Pink Shorts Press, Evercreech Editions, Aniko Press and Bakers Lane Books.

theconversation.com

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 29d

What does this even mean

"We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be Al, and we are the company that's bringing those people to life," said CEO Jeanine Wright, who was previously chief operating

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Patrick Allington @patrickallington.bsky.social · Sep 4

The report that Melbourne University Publishing will stop publishing the lit mag #Meanjin is bad news for readers, writers, thinkers, dreamers, doers, publishers, and policymakers - and for citizens who have never heard of or read Meanjin.
#Auslit #litmags
www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/04/m...

Literary journal Meanjin to close after 85 years of publishing

Meanjin, a mainstay of Australia's cultural landscape and the nation's second-oldest literary publication, is shuttering after Melbourne University Publishing decided to cease financial support.

www.crikey.com.au

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Kaz Cooke @kazcooke.bsky.social · Sep 1

Mainstream publishers persist in bringing out books full of 'what I reckon' and 'my friend sells spirulina in fancy bottles' pretendy-cure wellness influencer/celeb nonsense for everything from menopause to cancer to immune disorders to endometriosis.

Robin Ince @robinince.bsky.social · Sep 1

“As a disabled writer, it is clear to me there is a specific problem not just with counterfactual content being presented as truth, but counterfactual information about illness being presented as credible health advice.”
Worth reading

lithub.com/nature-is-no...

Nature is Not Going to Cure You: On Raynor Winn’s Fabricated Memoir

Like many writers, I have been following the unfolding revelations about Raynor Winn and The Salt Path with great interest, and a degree of self-interest. I am a memoirist and nature writer, and I …

lithub.com

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The Shovel @theshovel.bsky.social · Aug 20

For a moment, Winton thought he saw someone dressed as a twenty-something on the verge of uncovering their rural town’s terrible secret, but it was just a student in mufti.

theshovel.com.au/2025/08/20/t...

Tim Winton Wonders Why Nobody at Book Week Is Dressed as a Youngster Living in an Isolated Coastal Town Struggling To Find Their Identity — The Shovel

Tim Winton, the acclaimed Australian author and bane of secondary English students, has expressed disappointment in this year’s turnout at a local Book Week parade after nobody dressed up as any of hi...

theshovel.com.au

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spooky spice @jenniferdown.bsky.social · Aug 18

this, from the brain of perfect genius @radiomoderation.bsky.social , whips, as one would expect

Kill Your Darlings @kydmagazine.bsky.social · Aug 18

Alaina Gougoulis, an experienced senior editor, explores the dire state of the publishing industry.

Read more: buff.ly/bvRibNi

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erin mccann @mccanner.bsky.social · Aug 15

it finally happened

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...

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marque lawyers @marquelawyers.com.au · Aug 15

We've never seen a writers' festival try to impose a code of conduct on speakers before; it's not a thing. However, the weaponising of such codes by all sorts of institutions has been proliferating lately, detrimentally to the public interest.

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Alice Grundy @alicektg.bsky.social · Aug 6

The Productivity Commission has floated an idea to expand the fair use provision, which would make the kind of scraping AI companies do to train ChatGPT et al legal.

Authors and other creatives are rightly outraged.

NB: this isn't the first time the PC has come for book publishing.

The Productivity Commission is floating AI copyright exemptions – with worrying implications for Australian authors and publishers

Exemptions to copyright legislation for AI would disadvantage Australian writers – and set a bad precedent.

theconversation.com

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Patrick Allington @patrickallington.bsky.social · Aug 7

Congrats to the editorial and design team at Southern Cross University for the relaunch of the literary magazine Coastlines. I'm very pleased to have some fiction in the new issue, sitting among some fine writing and writers.
#litmags #Auslit #Ausfiction
coastlinesjournal.com

Coastlines Journal | A Journal of Good Writing

Explore Coastlines' latest issue featuring contemporary Australian poetry, fiction, and essays. Submit your work or learn about our programs today.

coastlinesjournal.com

Patrick Allington @patrickallington.bsky.social · Jul 10

Nicely said:
#academicpublishing
mediastudies.hypotheses.org/6850

Sale of the Amsterdam University Press (AUP) film, media and communication list to Taylor & Francis – Resignation of series editors and editorial board members

“GR Stocks” auf unsplash It is with great dismay that we, the undersigned, learned that the film, media and communication list of Amsterdam University Press (AUP) has been taken over by Taylor & Franc...

mediastudies.hypotheses.org

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Patrick Allington @patrickallington.bsky.social · Jun 26

Creative Australia is advertising for the inaugural director of Writing Australia. This is a time for transformative, systemic, disruptive thinking and change. And new voices.
#auslit #CreativeAustralia #WritingAustralia
australiacouncil.pulsesoftware.com/Pulse/job/zC...

australiacouncil.pulsesoftware.com

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The Australia Institute @australiainstitute.org.au · Jun 26

Private schools spend millions on new buildings, thanks to generous tax deductions. The Govt's own Productivity Commission recommended that the tax deduction for private schools be removed.

Our report shows how it creates inequality in our education system: australiainstitute.org.au/report/fundi...

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Patrick Allington @patrickallington.bsky.social · Jun 21

I commented on the present and future of the Miles Franklin Literary Award for Griffith Review:
#Auslit #MilesFranklin #GriffithReview
www.griffithreview.com/articles/the...

The drifting Miles Franklin Literary Award – Patrick Allington

Patrick Allington makes the case for a reappraisal of the Miles Franklin Literary Award and its implications for Australian literature.

www.griffithreview.com

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Australian Poetry @australianpoetry.bsky.social · Jun 6

Submissions are now open! Best of Australian Poems 2025 accepts published & unpublished poems from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025. Guest editors: Nam Le & Jill Jones! 🔥

Close of submissions: 30 June 2025.

Submission guidelines + how to submit: www.australianpoetry.org/ap-projects/...

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Kaz Cooke @kazcooke.bsky.social · May 31

Thinking of all the hardworking authors who've been so comprehensively ripped off. 'Historic royalty payments' = money earned and owed.

The Bookseller @thebookseller.com · May 30

Authors published by the crowdfunding publisher Unbound will not receive historic royalty payments for sales of their books, unless Boundless, the new publisher founded following Unbound going into administration, "survives and thrives" 👇 #BookSky