The absence of a human rights act in Australia will put everyone at greater risk as the country moves towards an AI-generated future, according to author Julianne Schultz.
Human rights, which the Australian parliament has never managed to properly legislate despite overwhelming public support, risks becoming a dimly remembered artefact of another age at precisely the moment it is needed most, she writes.
Algorithmic tools shaping lives
Artificial intelligence, automated decision-making, independent assessment tools and algorithms will shape the lives Australians live and the public support they receive, Schultz argues. However, human rights are not adequately legislated in Canberra, despite a parliamentary committee recommendation, a huge petition and campaign, and effective laws in Victoria, Queensland and the ACT.
The government has been patting itself on the back with its proposed digital duty of care – “my feed my way”, as the prime minister announced. It aims to introduce limits on the algorithms perfected by global surveillance giants and give Australians the right to help shape the information they receive, but not its accuracy. Meanwhile, the government is racing to use similar tools to determine how much support people receive for essential services.
Aged care tool failing
The provision of care to older Australians is currently the biggest canary in this mine. After only 10 months, it is clear that the department of ageing’s automated integrated assessment tool (IAT), used to determine eligibility and access to services, is failing. Contrary to all best practice recommendations or the scarifying experience of robodebt, it has no human oversight or override options.
Within days of the tool’s adoption, alarm bells began to ring. State health officials recognised that it was potentially catastrophic; spreadsheets of inappropriate decisions were compiled in every state. “Misaligned IAT outcomes”, they were called in NSW. In the words of the head of WA Health: “Without a pathway for discretion, a small but vulnerable group of older people might experience catastrophic outcomes while waiting for algorithmically determined access to services.”
Impact on states and hospitals
Beyond the human pain and suffering, this matters a great deal for the states and territories. It is their hospital beds that become the only option for elderly people who cannot get adequate care at home, or access to a residential care bed. The equivalent of whole hospitals are filled with people who should be receiving more appropriate care elsewhere.
The new Aged Care Act, which came into effect last November, took these issues seriously. Its beginning is a testament to the fundamental right to be treated with dignity, respect and independence. However, what was not so prominent was the inability of residents to take legal action if their rights were breached. There was a complaints mechanism, but these were not fully legally enforceable rights.
The contrast between the frontend of the Aged Care Act and its backend implementation could not have been sharper. The beginning of the act describes the rights of older Australians to receive care and be treated with dignity and respect. But the implementation is about transactions: minutes of care, checklists of tasks, organisational obligations.
“The plumbing of the reforms is undermining the poetry of the act,” the former inspector general of aged care Natalie Siegel-Brown told the National Press Club.
