Following the release of the budget and the reports that thousands more civil servants would be losing their jobs to ‘right size’ the government, a bill quickly passed under urgency to allow automated decision making through out the social security system in NZ.

The Social Security (Modernisation) Amendment Bill 2026 was passed in two days, circumventing the usual processes that would enable public consultation and lacking the parliamentary discussion intended to catch issues that before they arise and build in guardrails.

The unleashing of automated decision making in welfare and the lack of consultation has risen fears that we may be setting ourselves up to catastrophically fail our most vulnerable with several pundits bringing up similarities to Australia's experience doing something similar - the Robodebt scandal.

So Wire host Manny spoke to Visiting Fellow at the Australia University’s Crawford School of Public Policy, Dr Jacob Priergaard to learn about what happened in Australia when automated decision making went so wrong, and how we could avoid that here.