AUSTRALIA | Commonwealth Ombudsman – Report: Following the law is not optional - an investigation into ongoing non-compliance

The Commonwealth Ombudsman this week released a new report, ‘Following the law is not optional - an investigation to address an ongoing issue of agency non-compliance with the law’.

The Ombudsman’s investigation found 2 Australian government agencies were aware of an instance of the law not being applied correctly to decisions about child support payments. The Ombudsman found that while the concerns may have been reasonable, the failure to remediate the issue over 6 years was not reasonable. The Ombudsman highlighted lessons for all agencies, including key principles for any agency in remediating an instance of legal non-compliance:

• Service delivery and policy agencies need to engage properly with each other to remediate issues in a timely and effective way.
• Agencies need to fully understand the financial and non-financial impacts on people to inform their remediation strategy: decisions should be evidence-based.
• Agencies should be transparent with Government and the public – and they should seek Government approval of decisions not to apply the law.

Kindly click here to read the full media release.

Source: The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Australia