Submission - Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

On 4 June 2019, Allens Hub researchers, together with researchers from the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, joined to write a submission in response to questions raised in a call for submissions by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights into his thematic report to the United Nations General Assembly on digital technology, social protection and human rights.

The submission focuses on the Australian Government’s controversial program of automatically calculating and recovering debts owed because of welfare overpayments, known as ‘robo-debt’. It aims to sketch lessons to be learned from its originally flawed design and implementation in relation to government decision-making generally, drawing on the rule of law as a core constitutional value in most established legal orders, including Australia.

The submission has been published on the website of the United Nations Human Rights office of the high commissioner and can be accessed here