Government-contracted debt collectors allegedly threatened to garnish a student’s wages unless she immediately paid $500 for a Centrelink debt that was in dispute, a Senate inquiry has heard.
‘As any normal person would, I panicked and paid $500 using my credit card,’ postgraduate student says
A young doctor says a private debt collection agency chasing her Centrelink debt misleadingly claimed to be the Australian Government.
It's the latest allegation that debt collectors appointed by the Government are using aggressive tactics to get money from Australians targeted by robo-debts.
Centrelink has confirmed that they may release client's personal information in order to correct public statement of complaints, and this has comedian Bish Marzook worried. What if they tell a journalist she ate tomato sauce sandwiches to survive getting through university?
This seems to be a common problem for people who've done contract, casual or intermittent work in years they have received Newstart or Youth Allowance.
The government is crowing about its new automated system tracking down money incorrectly paid to welfare recipients, but Crikey is aware of multiple cases of people who have been unfairly and incorrectly targeted under the system.
The Coalition government is going to target more than 3 million of elderly and disabled Australians with its controversial Centrelink "robo-debt" campaign, Parliamentary documents show.
The mid-year economic forecast tables published last week shows the government has booked savings of $1.1 billion from data-matching the aged pension and another $400 million from the disability support pension.
The automated Centrelink Debt Recovery system has left thousands of Australian welfare recipients in crisis after a large number of inaccurate debt demands were distributed. A significant number of these vulnerable, low- income Australians that have been targeted are students.
The staff tasked with adminstering Centrelink’s “robo-debt” system are under huge pressure too and are demanding an immediate halt to the punitive approach.
A Centrelink worker told Green Left Weekly that the system was implemented without staff being trained and that they were ill equipped to explain the debts.
“We haven’t been told anything about how the robo-debt system works,” they said. “We have just been instructed to direct people to the MyGov website. We have been finding out the specifics about how the debts are generated by listening to Hack [the Triple J afternoon news program] or reading articles on social media.”
