It's the informal name given to a debt recovery program starting in 2015 that falsely accused members of the community of owing money to the government.

The Robodebt scheme automatically issued notices to welfare recipients identified as having debts through a process of income averaging.

This compares a person's reported income with their income as measured by the Australian Tax Office.

While similar techniques were used in the past, the scale of Robodebt's debt recovery was unprecedented.

Shortly after the scheme was implemented, people started to complain over being issued bills for debts that simply didn't exist.

In some cases, the debts topped $24,000.

The scheme unlawfully claimed almost $2 billion in payments from 433,000 people.

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