In the News

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.

As fed-up Australians demand answers from the seemingly unreachable Centrelink department, Attorney General George Brandis has bemused a television audience with his potential solution – “contact Centrelink”.

The last six to eight months have been difficult for the government’s digital transformation agenda. From the botched Census 2016 project to the latest acrimony about the Centrelink overpayment recovery program — it’s been a series of speed bumps attracting plenty of criticism from the public and public servants.

The federal government announced changes to Centrelink’s controversial automated debt recovery system on February 14.

Centrelink's phone lines are about to get better… no really, they're meant to, but you just have to wait a little longer for it to happen.
That's the line I'm getting from the Department of Human Services, which has copped a hammering in recent weeks over the government's controversial robo debt recovery scheme and its high error rates in clawing back overpaid welfare payments.

Centrelink's inability to adequately service its clients has reached crisis point. You can only squeeze so much from the lemon and funding and resourcing cuts should have stopped long ago.
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The situation has been made worse thanks to the Turnbull Government's terrible debt recovery program. It's chewing up so many of Centrelink's limited resources and leaving people sick with worry over letters informing them that they owe large amounts of money.

The activist group GetUp claims Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's government is shaking down ordinary people, often for debts they neither owe nor can effectively challenge.
The group's national director, Paul Oosting, said it would be launching a billboard criticising the government for failing to go after corporate tax cheats while it attacked ordinary people over "false" debt claims.
The billboard would be placed on the lawns of Parliament House on Friday, he said.

The government has formally tried to congratulate itself in the Parliament on its digital transformation of services in a sign of either “irony or grand self-delusion,” according to the shadow minister for the digital economy Ed Music.
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The motion pointed to the government’s Centrelink technology, its health and aged care payment system and the MyGov online system.