A government-run IT system responsible for hundreds of unlawful cancellations of welfare payments will be offline for several months.
The Targeted Compliance Framework runs Australia’s controversial mutual obligations regime for welfare recipients.
The system has been paused since 2025, after it unlawfully cancelled the payments of 964 job seekers between April 2022 and July 2024, the Commonwealth Ombudsman found.
Laws introduced after the Robodebt scandal require agencies to consider each job seeker’s circumstance before cutting off payments, but that did not happen.
Many recipients then had to go to great lengths, including producing detailed historical documents, to retrieve funds.
Department of Employment and Workplace Relations secretary Simon Duggan told a Senate committee that an extended period was needed to fix the system.
“This time frame reflects the greater complexity of returning these elements to lawful administration, including the need for more substantive changes to IT systems, procedures and training for human decision makers,” he said.
In the meantime, welfare recipients are still required to meet a complex list of obligations, to keep getting payments.
They include things like people on JobSeeker needing to attend regular meetings and apply for roles, or single parents needing to report their precise income.
Employment minister Amanda Rishworth used a National Press Club speech in May to announce sweeping JobSeeker changes.
She said unemployed people were “languishing” without proper help and the mutual obligations requirements simply took too much time.
Ms Rishworth said the changes would be “effective, fair and proportionate”.
The announcement came after more than five years of criticism that the system left people in unsuitable jobs or without adequate help.
A 2023 parliamentary inquiry into the scheme found the system had become focused on “kicking people off welfare”.
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