Australia's Robodebt Automated Debt Scandal Quiz

Answers and explanations appear as you take the quiz.

1. What was the central calculation method that made Robodebt debts unreliable?
   • Using bank transaction records to estimate spending
   • Averaging annual tax office income evenly across fortnights
   • Predicting future income with a machine learning model
   • Counting the number of employers a person had worked for
2. Why does averaging income cause errors for many welfare recipients?
   • Their income is often irregular or seasonal
   • Tax office data is usually fabricated
   • Centrelink does not require income reporting
   • Averaging always overstates income by exactly half
3. How did Robodebt change who had to prove the correct income?
   • The tax office had to verify each debt with employers
   • Courts reviewed every debt before it was issued
   • Recipients had to supply records to disprove the averaged figure
   • Private debt collectors calculated the final amount
4. What did the Federal Court's orders in the 2019 Amato case recognise?
   • That data matching between agencies is always illegal
   • That Centrelink must stop paying benefits fortnightly
   • That the scheme was lawful but poorly communicated
   • That a debt based on income averaging was not validly raised
5. Roughly what was the reported total value of the class action settlement?
   • About A$1.8 billion
   • About A$18 million
   • About A$180 billion
   • No money was involved; only an apology
6. Who led the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme?
   • A panel of tax office officials
   • Catherine Holmes
   • The Federal Court judge in the Amato case
   • An international UN rapporteur
7. According to the guide, what is a common misconception about Robodebt?
   • That it affected welfare recipients
   • That it involved data from the tax office
   • That it was mainly a software bug
   • That it was eventually stopped
8. What step did the earlier human-run process include that the automated version effectively removed?
   • Sending letters by post
   • Recording income by financial year
   • Paying benefits fortnightly
   • Using the data match only as a trigger for verification with employers