Inaugural Carney Public Lecture

Emeritus Professor Terry Carney delivers "Australian Social Services Scandals: Towards dystopia? Or equity and justice for the vulnerable?"

Inaugural Carney Public Lecture

Australian Social Services Scandals: Towards dystopia? Or equity and justice for the vulnerable?

In-person event

In this public lecture, Emeritus Professor Terry Carney explores the harm and injustices experienced by vulnerable Australians due to social services program failures such as Robodebt, employment services sanctioning or the apportionment scandals, and concerns about proposed changes to the way NDIS budgets are determined. He argues that while legal protections and remedies have been well renovated to accommodate individual social security grievances (restoring fidelity to liberal values), law reform has failed adequately to address either the systemic harms and mass grievances (a failure to guarantee socio-economic values such as distributional justice), or develop preventive counters to the forces that give rise to such failures. Avenues of redress for social services such as the NDIS, it is suggested, provide little of either individual or systemic justice. The mainly extra-legal successes of public health measures perhaps may offer clues to how better to respond to systemic injustices in social security.

Journalist Rick Morton will give a reply to Emeritus Professor Carney via Zoom, discussing his coverage of Robodebt and his recent book on the subject, Mean Streak.

Dr Christopher Rudge will chair this discussion.

About the speakers

Terry Carney AO, LLB (Hons), Dip Crim (Melb), PhD (Monash) is Emeritus Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and a past President (2005–07) of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, he chaired Commonwealth bodies such as the National Advisory Council on Social Welfare and the Institute of Family Studies, along with various State inquiries on child welfare, adult guardianship and health law. He has authored over 250 academic papers and nearly a dozen books/monographs in the areas of health and welfare, including Australian Mental Health Tribunals: Space for fairness, freedom, protection & treatment? (Sydney: Themis, 2011); Managing Anorexia Nervosa: Clinical, Legal & Social Perspectives on Involuntary Treatment (NY: Nova Science, 2006) and Social Security Law and Policy (Sydney: Federation press, 2006). Currently a chief investigator on a Medical Research Future Fund project ‘Building Capacity for Supported Decision-Making for people living with Dementia and Acquired Disability (BUDDY)’ (Sinclair et al 2025) he is an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-making and Society, writing on issues of automation in social security law, welfare services and the NDIS. A former part time member for nearly forty years of the tribunal reviewing social security decisions, he was instrumental in ruling ‘robodebt’ to be unlawful.

Rick Morton is the author of four non-fiction books, including the critically-acclaimed bestseller One Hundred Years of Dirt which was long listed for the Walkley Book of the Year 2018 and shortlisted for the National Biography Award (NBA) 2019. Rick is the senior reporter with The Saturday Paper and two times Walkley Award winner for his coverage of the Robodebt Royal Commission. His latest book Mean Streak on the subject has been shortlisted for four literary prizes and won the 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Award in the non-fiction category.

Christopher Rudge is a sociolegal scholar and lecturer at Sydney Law School and Deputy Director of Sydney Health Law. His research lies at the intersection of health law, regulation, bioethics and social welfare, with a particular focus on the governance of emerging medical technologies, innovative treatments and civil and political rights.

Thursday 11 December 2025

Time: 6 - 7.30 pm (Refreshments to follow lecture)

Venue: Sydney Law School, Law Lounge, Level 1, New Law Building Annexe (F10A), University of Sydney, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1.5

This event is presented by Sydney Health Law at the University of Sydney Law School.