Reform after Robodebt: lessons from the Netherlands

The Netherlands' Childcare Allowance Scandal and Australia's Robodebt are both cases where welfare compliance policies resulted in administrative harm. Both cases were institutional crises which caused a sharp decline in public trust in the welfare policy sector. However, the responses of the respective Governments diverged significantly. Australia focused on improving legal oversight of policy processes, whereas the Netherlands pursued wide-ranging structural reform to Government service delivery. I argue there were clear differences in the institutional environment and ways that the crisis unfolded that make it unlikely that Australia would pursue the sort of reformist agenda that has occurred in the Netherlands. This was because there was a long history of successful welfare compliance policies in Australia and the courts succeeded to some extent in protecting victims of the scheme against the harm, unlike in the Netherlands. The paper concludes by considering the lessons Australian policymakers can learn from the Netherlands.