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Ombudsman asked to investigate Centrelink

4 January 2017
The West Australian

The Commonwealth Ombudsman has been asked to investigate faults with Centrelink's new automated data matching system that has resulted in welfare receipients being wrongly hounded to pay debts.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has asked the ombudsman to step in after receiving more than 100 complaints to his electoral office about problems with the debt recovery process.

"The government has terrified countless people, ruined the Christmases of many and even driven some people to contemplate taking their own lives," Mr Wilkie said in a statement. [...] "You don't have to be a genius to tell that taking someone's yearly income and dividing by 26 is not always going to produce accurate results if only because people's circumstances change," he said.

Labor's spokeswoman on human services Linda Burney called for the system to be suspended immediately until an algorithm is fixed.