On 26 May 2017 Andrew Wilkie MP wrote to the Auditor-General asking for an audit of Centrelink's automated debt recovery. The reply, dated 27 June 2017, said "I do not intend to re-examine this specific issue", because the Commonwealth Ombudsman had reported on it in April 2017, and that the matters would be considered within a proposed audit of the department's enforcement and compliance strategy.
When the ANAO did audit Services Australia's debt management, in 2022-23, its scope note excluded the scheme by name. After the Royal Commission, the Auditor-General wrote that the Commission's report "highlighted the need for public sector entities to be able to provide assurance over the operation of automated decision-making". The decision in 2017 not to duplicate the Ombudsman was a reasonable one at the time. It is still a lesson about what an auditor that chooses about forty topics a year, and does not count or report what the public sends it, is likely to find.