I have twice had my ATO data averaged over the years in which for part of the financial year I was on Newstart, and for the rest of the year I was gainfully employed.
Once for the financial year of 2012-13 and most recently for the financial year of 2015-16.
Both times involved considerable stress on my part as I work in the performing arts sector and do not have a lot of leeway in my yearly budget for random unexpected costs of multiple thousands of dollars and dealing with the prospect of that hanging over my head and the accompanying anxiety and stress was a considerable blow to my quality of life over those periods before I was able to clarify my data.
As I work in the performing arts, my payslips aren't regular week-to-week affairs, and therefore the company only issues them when requested, instead providing me with group certificates at the end of the year.
Between 2016 and now the company has changed both computer systems and general manager, and the new guy was not as familiar with me as a person, leading to considerable delay in acquiring the documents in question.
I am also non-binary transgender and have changed my name socially from what is legally on the payslips leading to further delay in finding them in the system.
As a result I had to apply for multiple extensions to the time period for providing the information requested.
Each time I was met with hostility or reluctance and on one occasion was flat out told the person in compliance I was talking to did not have the ability to grant the extension.
When I requested that either the call be escalated to someone with the authority to do so or a formal complaints process be initiated, magically she gained the authority to grant the extension that she very definitely couldn't before after only 5 seconds on hold (like magic!).
I finally got the payslips, and after over an hour talking to a man in compliance, I was told, amazingly, that what I had asserted from the beginning was correct: That the period I was employed and the period I was receiving benefits did not overlap and therefore I didn't owe them anything.
The man I was on the phone with seemed amazed, and informed me he had never seen that before.
Having been through this exact process with regards to my 2012-13 financial year, and having anecdotally heard many similar stories I can only assume he's new.
As a system, appallingly.
Three individuals I talked to over the process were extremely helpful, two were very much the opposite, but regardless I am utterly enraged now that twice I have had multiple months long periods of appealing and clarifying data and having to make declarations that there was a "Good reason my data had changed" (as if I had supplied them with inaccurate information as opposed to them applying accurate information incorrectly) and all this expense on their part and stress on mine both times added up to exactly what I already knew from the start: That I didn't owe them anything.
I just keep thinking about the work hours wasted, the amount it costs to pay Centrelink call staff, the amount my time is worth, the amount the time of the people at my former job is worth and how that all adds up to just a lot of stress to me and no money owed.
They claim this is in order to be responsible and accountable for the taxpayer's money, but I am a taxpayer, and I am VERY unhappy with this expenditure that is supposedly being done on my behalf.
I value both the money I pay into the tax system and my time very highly, and to see them both wasted in this way is appalling.
No reasonable person would design a system that matches data expressed in time periods of a year with partial data for the same period expressed in fortnights and expect they would match.
If someone is only on benefits for part of a year, and their ATO data DOES match that would be more surprising, because it would imply someone left benefits without having a job to go on to and proceeded to survive without any income for the rest of the financial year.
This system has been set up, whether through incompetence or malice, in such a way as to maximise the amount of false positives for those that manage to find employment and leave the welfare system, which, I might remind everyone, is supposedly the entire point of Newstart, and to take punitive action against people who dare to ever need the assistance of a welfare state safety net that is our right as citizens, and the provision of which is our responsibility as moral people existing in a capitalist system.
A cynical person might suggest this is in the hopes people will pay the government money they do not owe either by mistake, in order to make the problem go away, or because they cannot prove they do not owe the money.
Certainly any private company behaving in this way would have been prosecuted for fraud or attempted fraud long ago.