And now for state of the nation …

The Australian Robo-debt scheme pursued the poorest of the poor for welfare debt and in some cases, hounded them to death. Sounds like something Asimov or Heinlein would have written. Artificial intelligence gone mad and the middle class let it happen.

Robo-debt was abandoned three years ago but not before it bullied and harassed 470,000 people – a $1.9 billion screw-up. Federal Court’s Justice Bernard Murphy said was a “shameful chapter in the administration of the commonwealth.”

The investigation commission revealed bureaucratic and political arse-covering, incompetence and blame-shifting of a kind not seen before. It showed cruelty, cowardice and a disgusting pursuit of the vulnerable.

The scandal – along with the Fee-debt horror perpetrated by private training organisations on vulnerable young adults – is the pinnacle of Canberra bubble-thinking.

Only by perpetrating middle class deafness could a department do something so dumb and terrifying.

Rhys James was a young man suffering from depression who broke free from welfare dependence to work for a florist and attend university. Yet then he received seven robo-demands in seven weeks in 2016 for a fictitious debt of $17,319.58. He died by suicide three weeks after the last letter.

This is the worst dog act an Australian government has perpetrated on its own people. To mobilise sophisticated machinery which bears no fingerprints against society’s most unfortunate – the gutlessness of it has to be seen to be believed.