Two machines, two clocks

On 26 October 2026, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations intends to switch two welfare compliance powers back on. Neither power was the subject of either of the two Commonwealth Ombudsman investigations that have examined this system since 2024. Both investigations centre on a third, different power, one that stays paused with no return date earlier than the first quarter of 2027.

The confirmed harm sits with that third power. Under section 42AF(2)(d) of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, a computer program kept cancelling people's payments automatically after Parliament changed the Secretary's duty to cancel into a discretion in 2022. Between 8 April 2022 and 4 July 2024, 964 people had a combined 985 of those cancellations applied to them, and the Ombudsman found the conduct contrary to law.

The two powers restarting in October, sections 42AM and 42AG(1)(a), were paused on their own separate dates, for their own separate reasons, and no Ombudsman report has tested either one. A figure said to run past 300,000 people is often attached to the same story. It is a finding of neither Ombudsman report: the second report mentions it once, in a footnote, without adopting it, and it has never been verified as a finding by anyone other than the organisation that produced it.

01The machine that already broke

The Targeted Compliance Framework decides, in large part by computer, whether a person keeps their welfare payment. Section 6A of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 lets the Secretary of DEWR arrange for computer programs to make decisions under the social security law, and any decision a computer makes that way is deemed in law to be a decision of the Secretary.

In April 2022 an amendment changed the Secretary's power under section 42AF(2) to cancel a payment for a persistent mutual obligation failure from a duty into a discretion. From that point the department was required to consider a jobseeker's individual circumstances before cancelling, rather than cancel automatically. The Ombudsman's central finding is that this did not happen.

The Ombudsman's finding went beyond a description of process failure and reached a formal opinion.

The department had already been told there was a problem before its own investigation reached this point. On 6 December 2024 the Australian Council of Social Service raised concerns with the Ombudsman's office that income support payments may have been cancelled unlawfully or inappropriately, a complaint ACOSS's own account also places in December 2024.

The Ombudsman's first report, Automation in the Targeted Compliance Framework: when the law is changed but the system isn't, published in August 2025, made seven recommendations, and DEWR and Services Australia accepted all of them. The department's response was immediate: "I thank the Ombudsman for his insights. The department has accepted all recommendations in the report."

The portfolio's political head commented on what the finding meant, not on the numbers behind it. "The report reinforces that when legislative changes are made, it is essential the processes and systems that agencies employ to deliver services reflect the legislation," Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Amanda Rishworth said in response to the first report.

02What compensation has paid, and who was never asked

The confirmed harm has a precise size and a precise date range, set out in the Ombudsman's second report, Fairness in the Targeted Compliance Framework: when decisions are made beyond your control, published in December 2025.

Nearly a quarter of the affected cohort, 24 per cent, had one or more recorded vulnerability indicators attributed to them: psychiatric illness, chronic illness requiring frequent treatment, literacy or language barriers, or drug or alcohol dependency.

The second report judged the process, not only the outcome.

The path to that 651 ran through a layered review. DEWR first reviewed all 985 decisions and found 603 eligible without further contact. Of the remaining 361 people asked for more information, 54 responded, and 37 of those were recommended for compensation, worth $50,290.52 combined. A further 11 of the 361 were recommended after a secondary review of departmental IT data, without needing the person's response.

Compensation for this cohort is not automatic. "Once this work is complete, the department will begin inviting people affected by potentially incorrect payment cancellation decisions to submit a claim for compensation. These invitations will be extended progressively over the coming months. This means that not everyone will receive an invitation to claim at the same time," DEWR said on 4 August 2026, describing the broader compensation round still being designed for other paused categories.

No source read for this article publishes a count of how many of the 985 decisions, or how many people separately affected by section 42AM, were never invited to claim. The Ombudsman's second report records only that "all people across this cohort who could be contacted, have been advised of the availability of additional compensation for detriment that exceeds loss of payment for the relevant period and the process to apply". What happens to people who could not be contacted is not stated.

The same second report separately measured how often decisions made by employment services providers held up on review. Over three months from 1 July to 30 September 2024, Services Australia found that 51 per cent of 3,820 capability assessments concluded the job seeker was not capable of meeting the requirements providers had set in their job plans. Of 18,170 purported persistent mutual obligation failures Services Australia investigated between 1 April 2022 and 4 July 2024, it overturned 27 per cent after discussing the decision with the jobseeker. These are two distinct metrics, capability reassessment and decision overturn, and should not be collapsed into a single "more than half" figure.

03The machine nobody investigated

Two different provisions of the same Act are scheduled to start deciding people's payments again on 26 October 2026. DEWR describes what each one does in its own words.

This is the correction this case turns on. Neither Commonwealth Ombudsman report investigated section 42AM or section 42AG(1)(a) as its subject matter. Both reports centre on section 42AF(2)(d), the different, still-paused provision covered above.

The restart itself is not unconditional. "Resuming these decisions on 26 October 2026 is contingent on successful completion of assurance activity and system testing to ensure the necessary IT changes, improved guidance for decision-makers and additional safeguards to ensure decision-making under these provisions align with the law," DEWR's 4 August 2026 statement says.

That statement also needs a correction of attribution. It promises a further statement in October, and the promise belongs to the department's Secretary, not to the Minister. "I will make a further statement confirming the resumption of these provisions in October," the statement reads, signed "Simon Duggan PSM, Secretary of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations." As at the Australian Greens' release of 5 August 2026, Minister Amanda Rishworth had made no statement of her own on the restart.

The same statement commits to a further disclosure covering everything else still paused. "At this stage we expect these provisions to resume in the first quarter of 2027. I will provide an update on the progress of this work before the end of this year," it says. Secretary Duggan took up the role on 16 February 2026, after Natalie James, who had signed the pause and progress statements referenced above, was placed on leave in December 2025 and departed in January 2026.

04Five pauses, two clocks

Five separate decision types under the Targeted Compliance Framework were paused, on five separate dates, across two Secretaries' terms. Two of the five are due back on 26 October 2026. One has no scheduled return before the first quarter of 2027 at the earliest. The other two are grouped, without an individual date, in the department's own first-quarter-2027 estimate.

The fifth pause was of section 42AG in full, not of subsection (1)(a) alone. "The department has taken the precautionary step to pause decision making under section 42AG of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 ... These decisions were paused on 5 July 2025," DEWR's 3 October 2025 statement says. It is subsection (1)(a) specifically that DEWR now intends to restart on 26 October 2026, alongside section 42AM.

05The assurance behind the restart

The restart's conditions rest on an assurance process that has already gone wrong once. DEWR commissioned an independent IT assurance review of the Targeted Compliance Framework from Deloitte, running from December 2024 to June 2025 and published on 14 August 2025. On 3 October 2025 the department disclosed a problem with it.

Press reporting on the same episode described it in sharper terms.

This desk relies on DEWR's own admission and that press characterisation, since both were read directly. The reported cost of the review and the identity of the academic who found the errors are not printed here as settled fact; neither was independently verified to this desk's standard.

A second piece of assurance infrastructure is still not built. The Digital Protections Framework was required by an Act of Parliament passed in 2022, and more than three years later it still did not exist when the first Ombudsman report was published.

It reached public consultation only in 2026. "The draft frameworks are available on our Consultation Hub ... Submissions close 11:59 pm AEST 28 September 2026," DEWR's hub page states, last modified 31 August 2026. That closing date falls four weeks before the 26 October 2026 restart DEWR says is conditional on this same assurance work being complete.

06What the number is, and what it isn't

A figure larger than any the Ombudsman confirmed circulates around this case, and its origin is not in dispute. Economic Justice Australia, a peak legal body for community legal centres, produced it itself.

The Ombudsman's own report references a version of the same figure, but only once, in a footnote, and only as an unresolved concern about a different provision, section 42AM, never as an investigated finding.

The Ombudsman's own reports place this case in a wider history the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme already examined, and say so directly.

Robodebt is context for this case, not a finding about it. No court has considered this system, and this article does not attribute the personal conduct of any minister or official as negligent, malicious or dishonest; the record here is of official statements and official actions taken in public office.

A separate, earlier strand of reporting concerns a different, earlier set of IT defects in the same computer system, running from 2018 to 2024, which is what first drew scrutiny to the Targeted Compliance Framework and is distinct from the 964/985 cohort above. The Saturday Paper reported in February 2025 that ten welfare recipients had died after having their payments wrongly cut off, and that Services Australia would not say whether the deaths were the result of suicide or destitution. That is that outlet's own reporting, tabled at Senate estimates; it is not a finding of cause of death by any official body, and the Ombudsman's first report cites the article only once, in a footnote, as an example of the media reporting that preceded its investigation.

Correction, 7 October 2026. The opening of this article said the figure of more than 300,000 people 'belongs to neither Ombudsman report'. That contradicted this section, which records that the Ombudsman's second report mentions a version of the figure once, in a footnote. The opening now says the figure is a finding of neither report, and that the second report mentions it once, in a footnote, without adopting it.

07The response, and the silence

The restart drew an immediate political response. "The Minister and the Department's failure to communicate these matters in a timely, effective or comprehensible fashion is characteristic of all the worst Robodebt-style governance," Senator Penny Allman-Payne, the Australian Greens' spokesperson on Social Services, said on 5 August 2026, the day after the Secretary's announcement.

The same release records that, as of that date, the Minister herself had not spoken on the restart. Her only quoted comment found in this research relates to the first Ombudsman report, from August 2025, not to the announcement restarting two provisions that report did not investigate as its subject matter.

A week later, Economic Justice Australia, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, the Antipoverty Centre and the Australian Council of Social Service issued a joint statement, on 13 August 2026, opposing the restart of sections 42AM and 42AG(1)(a).

None of this is a court finding, and none of it is treated as one here. It is attributed comment from named advocates and a named political office-holder, set against a restart that two Ombudsman investigations did not examine as their subject matter.

Same Act, same computer system, same Secretary's office. Two different clocks.

If it’s a rort, we cover it.

Update, 7 October 2026. Reference ¹¹, which pointed to the department's Targeted Compliance Framework hub page, now points to the consultation page for the draft Digital Protections Framework itself, which states the 28 September 2026 close.