Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Curtin for her question. Issues around when and how the government uses automated decision-making are very important for us to grapple with as a parliament because AI is increasingly prevalent right across our society and right across our economy. Of course, we as a government have discussed in a great amount of detail the appropriate safeguards that we need when automated decision-making tools are used in any of our portfolios. Our approach is that in every case there needs to be human oversight of any use of AI. We don't just hand over decision-making to abstract computer programs, as was the case under robodebt, which caused such great suffering for 430,000 Australians. Of the robodebt royal commission's 52 recommendations, 93 per cent have been implemented, and, for the remaining four measures, work is ongoing; three of those four measures will require legislation.

Those opposite came up with an automated decision-making program that was designed simply to raise revenue. It was used to attack the most vulnerable people in our community. There is certainly no way that our government would ever do such a thing that we know resulted in the suicide of Australians who were impacted by this.

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