How Robodebt Killed Vulnerable People Like Me

Please note: this article discusses suicide and suicidal ideation. For advice and support around these issues in Australia, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or click here

In 2018 a friend of mine, K, called me to say he was going to kill himself that weekend. This was not the first time we had had this conversation, but it was the first time he’d given me a specific reason other than the day-to-day travails of trauma, poverty, and illness. He’d had a time of it, he told me, with Centrelink.

K had been targeted by robodebt, the automated debt collection scheme implemented by the Australian Government in 2016. What this meant was that the country’s welfare support agency, Centrelink, had…