In 2016, Centrelink began using a new automated technique (later found to be fatally flawed and unlawful) for reconciling welfare recipients' records against data from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in order to allegedly uncover fraud and overpayment, thus facilitating the scrape-back of these alleged debts from clients.

Human interaction in the fact-checking and dispatch of the debt letters was extremely limited, with the process relying on a ubiquitous level of automation based on fatally flawed software algorithms (prompting the creation of the 'Robodebt' moniker).

Numerous allegations of callous & heavy-handed tactics by Centrelink & its contracted private debt collectors resulted in reports that some recipients had been psychologically traumatised and that there had been consequent suicides, including the tragic case of Corey Web, who had been vulnerable and struggling to repay a Robodebt when he took his own life in 2017.

[14] Despite numerous and widespread concerns being raised about Robodebt, the 2018 Australian federal budget indicated that the data matching scheme would be expanded further.

[15] In February 2019, Legal Aid Victoria announced that they would challenge the method that Centrelink uses to calculate a person's income, with a spokesperson for Legal Aid stating that the calculation method used was "crude" and failed to take into account the variation in work periods and hours that many recipients had to juggle, thus rendering any income & consequent debt claim as false.

[21] While the federal Labor Party was in opposition prior to the May 2022 federal elections, it committed to establishing a Royal Commission to investigate the Robodebt scandal and, following Labor's return to government as a result of their winning that poll, the new Albanese Labor government announced the establishment on 18 August 2022 of the Royal Commission which, in its final report of 7 July 2023, denounced the Robodebt scheme as both fundamentally flawed and unlawful, making adverse findings against the ministers responsible for its oversight as well as a number of senior public service officials, all of whose actions the commission found to be reprehensible.