In April last year, Michelle Lawson received an unpleasant surprise from the Department of Human Services: she apparently owed them more than $6000, from single-parent benefits received years earlier.
The Seven Hills mother-of-two declared her part-time income fortnightly and it was checked annually against her tax returns.
The number of letters sent out under Centrelink's controversial robo-debt policy has soared past 230,000 as the federal appeals tribunal braces for a flood of disputes.
Treasury costings have put the price of Centrelink's data-matching and debt recovery at least $93 million, including payments to commercial debt collectors.
The Turnbull government plans to raise a windfall of $4.6 billion over the next four years, and this is how they intend to do it.
Centrelink is averaging annual earnings over every fortnightly reporting period. This means that you are determined by them to have earned income at the same time as you received unemployment benefits. Therefore, you must pay those benefits back.
I emailed the Department of Human Services about the Centrelink #notmydebt fiasco that’s been in the news of late. The content of my emailed questions, and the DHS response are reproduced below. I’ve trimmed personal data and some header/footer guff, and played with some of the styling to make it more readable in this blog, but the content itself is verbatim.
Centrelink has been slamming thousands of Australians with inaccurate debt letters for months now, so here’s what to do if you are contacted by the agency.
Centrelink has removed advice telling welfare recipients they only needed to keep payslips for six months, which conflicted with the government’s efforts to claw back debts from up to six years ago.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has launched an investigation into the Centrelink debt recovery debacle – which both major parties played a hand in creating.
The federal government continues to back its highly controversial automated Centrelink debt recovery system despite heavy criticism and digital transformation heavyweight Paul Shetler labelling it “appalling”.
The man in charge of Centrelink’s new system, which is sending thousands of automated letters to welfare recipients asking them for money back, says those feeling “lost in the system” should write to him directly: hank [at] humanservices.gov.au
Customers suffering distress and anxiety from debt notification letters sent out from Centrelink’s data-matching system are being referred to Lifeline by the federal welfare agency.
On Wednesday, independent MP Andrew Wilkie claimed that he had been in touch with people who were suicidal as a result of the allegedly false debt notices. He said that “the government has terrified countless people”.
Now social media records show that Centrelink’s official account has been advising multiple customers to get in touch with Lifeline in the midst of correspondence
