In the News

The Turnbull government will make a series of changes to Centrelink’s controversial debt recovery system after weeks of politically damaging criticism.
Human Services Minister Alan Tudge has instructed his department to amend the recovery process.
This is despite the government’s continued insistence that the computer-run scheme, which claws back alleged overpayments, is a success.

"I'm not aware of individuals who are completely convinced that they don't owe money but have been given a debt notice." -- Human Services Minister Alan Tudge
Despite being unaware of that happening, Tudge is now enforcing changes to ensure that it stops, with the Centrelink process being adjusted so that debts will not be transferred to debt recovery agencies until after the client is aware of the supposed debt.

A new poll by Reachtel, commissioned by GetUp! and taken before Sussan Ley's resignation, finds that the politician expense scandals and the Centrelink nightmare are not getting the government's year off to good start. According to the poll, Labor leads the Coalition 54-46 on a two-party preferred basis.
The poll focused heavily on the Centrelink issue, with 46.2% of people saying they want the debt collection suspended, compared to only 36.2% who want to keep it. The rest are undecided.

The government’s horrific start to the year is not only fully deserved, it is completely appropriate. The Centrelink shemozzle and entitlements abuses are a wonderful amalgam of the absence of respect for those on welfare and the tin-eared political nous which characterises this government.
Let’s not pretend that Centrelink issuing faulty debt notices is just a case of IT gone wrong.
Faults where people are issued debt notices of $14,000 due to the system incorrectly duplicating employers, or because it hamfistedly averages annual income over 52 weeks are not really IT glitches, but rather are part of the policy design.

Human Services Minister Alan Tudge needs a strong dose of reality.
Obviously Mr Tudge, with his $100,000 plus salary and seemingly unlimited taxpayer-funded expense account, has little idea of how debt recovery letters work for most people.

Centrelink, the Australian Tax Office and the government are overseeing another cock-up the magnitude of the online Census shutdown.
Imagine if we sent the debt collectors in for overpayments to politicians for questionable travel expenses to footy matches.

When a Bendigo aged care facility decided to change its name, a simple re-brand was probably the only thing on the board’s mind.
But the decision – inadvertently – set in motion a series of events that left one of its former employees owing $2558 to Centrelink.
At least that’s what Rob K and his accountant have since discovered.
He was one of the tens of thousands of Australians to receive a Centrelink debt recovery letter in the second half of 2016 as part of an automated nationwide audit.

Australian democracy right now may be more vulnerable than many care to admit. One reason is that the branch office mentality of so many politicians often leads them to assimilate and ape American trends. The usual suspects have been flaunting their Trump fandom, but others may come to see his victory and his politics as something to be more closely emulated.
More serious, though, are multiplying signs of a kind of structural rot whose sources are internal.

It's really not a great time to be busted in the entitlements cookie jar amidst stories of single parents, students, pensioners and people with disabilities being pursued for debts that, in many cases, they did not even owe. When even A Current Affair is sticking up for people on the dole, you're doing your scapegoat politics very badly.