Automated Decision-Making (Safeguards and Transparency) Bill 2026

Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (10:21): Governments increasingly use automated decision-making to deliver services more efficiently and consistently, but the robodebt royal commission found that unlawful use of automated decision-making harmed hundreds of thousands of Australians. Its final report recommended a consistent legal framework in which automation and government services can operate.

That was in July 2023, and we're still waiting for that framework. But, since November 2025, we have used the Integrated Assessment Tool on older Australians who need support at home. The tool is being used by clinicians, but the information that they collect is being fed into an algorithm which determines the final funding classification, and assessors can't override that outcome, even when their clinical judgement differs.

After widespread concerns and complaints, the Commonwealth Ombudsman is now investigating the tool. It wasn't live tested before it was introduced, and now the government has commissioned a rapid review, having recognised that one size does not fit everybody. In the NDIS, the I-CAN assessment tool has now been selected to inform calculation of participants' budgets.

The government, again, has suggested that a single tool can foster consistency and fairness, but the reality exists and remains that a blunt and opaque instrument used against the diversity of disability and of need has been almost universally condemned by expert policymakers and by disability advocates. Where automated decisions from government shape the daily lives of people with a disability or older Australians, we have to understand how those decisions are made.

We have to have an avenue to challenge them, and we need capacity for fair and just review by a human. That's what this bill seeks to achieve. It contains a legislative framework for transparency, risk assessment, human accountability, review rights and independent oversight.

It will assure that automation will serve us—not the reverse—and that humans have fair and transparent oversight of systems that should serve humans. I am pleased to second this bill, and I thank the member for Curtin for her leadership on this very important issue. The SPEAKER: The time allotted for this debate has expired.

The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.