Rebuild a Centrelink debt calculation from the payment and income records
Key facts
- Human involvement
- YellowClose supervision
- How AI is used
- Working with the lawyer, lay out the payment history and the client's actual earnings fortnight by fortnight from payslips and bank records, apply the rate rules the lawyer specifies, and show the difference between what was paid and what was payable in each fortnight.
- What the lawyer must review
- The lawyer chooses the rate rules, recomputes each fortnight independently, checks no income has been averaged or apportioned without a legal basis, and decides whether a debt exists and in what amount.
- Written for / version
- US
Open a jurisdiction version of this task to see which instruments apply: US
Who does what
| Role | What they do |
|---|---|
| Assistance | Do not begin AI assistance until the responsible lawyer has defined and confirmed its permitted scope. |
| Lawyer | Set the scope, supervise the work closely, verify every part relied on, resolve omissions and exceptions, and approve the exact output. |
Checklist
- Check every fortnight's income figure against the payslip or bank record for that fortnight, not a period total divided across fortnights.
- Recompute the schedule with a method independent of the tool before relying on the total.
- Confirm the rate rules applied are those in force for each fortnight in the debt period.
- Ask for recovery to be paused while the review runs, if that has not been done.
Forms and precedents for this task
| Form or precedent | Kind | AI use | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Request to waive or write off a Centrelink debt (special circumstances, administrative error, write-off) | Letter | AI use Red | Advice-led letter asking Services Australia to waive all or part of a social security debt under the Social Security Act 1991 (special circumstances under s 1237AAD, sole administrative error under s 1237A) or, in the alternative, to write it off under s 1236. |
| Request to Services Australia for a client's records and the debt calculation | Letter | AI use Yellow | Letter requesting a client's Centrelink records under Services Australia's administrative access scheme, with the client's consent: payment history, income details, the debt schedule and calculation, and the documents the decision relied on, with freedom of information as the fallback. |
Signed-in accounts can read the full text of each one. All precedents.
Sources
- Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme: Report · 2026-10-18
- Services Australia: Explanations and formal reviews of a Centrelink decision · 2026-10-18
- Administrative Review Tribunal: Centrelink · 2026-10-18
These are suggested working checks. Confirm the required checking with the responsible lawyer before work starts; the checking approach does not establish permission to use AI.