Accurate on average is not the same question#
Back of the Envelope · Week 9
Two questions, one habit of merging them#
How uncertain is the estimate — and have you said so honestly?
Once it is acted on: who absorbs the gap if it is wrong?
The second question has nothing to do with how carefully the first one was answered.
One number, repeated twenty-six times#
From 2015, a fortnight’s reported income was compared against the year’s income, divided evenly across twenty-six fortnights.
Every question the Act actually asked was about one particular fortnight.
Many overstatements, few understatements, same annual total#
Income earned in bursts: nine quiet months overstated, fortnight after fortnight, and one busy quarter understated by a lot, a few times.
They cancel across the year — that is the only sense in which they balance.
A notice with a date · a quieter ledger#
Overstate a fortnight and a debt notice arrives, with a number and a date to respond by.
Understate one and nothing happens — a smaller debt sits quietly in a ledger, discovered by no one.
The rules decided which direction would be pursued. That decision was institutional, not mathematical.
Who had to prove what#
Ordinarily, a debt exists once the agency is satisfied a particular payment was too high.
Here, a recipient who received a notice had to show the averaged figure was wrong — or the debt stood and was recovered.
“Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals.”
The Royal Commission’s final report, 2023.
In each direction, who has to act — and can they?#
Turn the same question on your own Client Estimate.
Who bears the cost if your count comes in too high? Too low? The same party, or different ones?
This is the stakes note the brief asks for.