I received initial letter of intent at the start of November 2016...I complied with everything I was required to do eg.. provide documentation and letters of support from my employer and yet I still received my bill of $3196 on the 5/12/2016...due date 3/1/2017. Thankfully I had kept ALL my paperwork from the 2010/2011 period and strangely enough the amount of benefits I was paid during this time was $2717? The next 5 weeks following that bill have been the most harrowing and frustrating time of my life...attempting to navigate the centrelink compliance system...learning to speak 'centrelink speak'...making a total of 20 calls to centrelink and each time having to deal with staff who either fobbed me off, didn't know what they were doing or giving out information completely the opposite of the last person I had spoken with. I ended up posting on Hank Jongen's Facebook page...emailing him (he answers nothing...his staff do), emailing Alan Tudge - Minister for Human Services and also emailing various members of the shadow ministry.
In the middle of this process my online access to the compliance section of centrelink expired so this also meant a second visit to a centrelink office to verify my identification...I work full time so you can only imagine the amount of my out of work hours this consumed. One lucky occurrence that happened on early in the piece was that I was accidentally given centrelink's compliance office phone number of 1800 086 400 which is answered almost straight away so I haven't had the issue of hours of waiting to talk to someone on phone like others have had.
I DID NOT OWE ANY MONEY...I KNEW SYSTEM WAS BROKEN AND WAS AVERAGING OUT YEARLY INCOMES, NOT LOOKING AT INDIVIDUAL TIME PERIODS...but no-one would listen. The reason I had applied for sickness benefits in the first place was I had been gravely ill and fortunately, after emergency surgery and 3 months off work, I recovered well. I have been striving to live my life relatively stress free since but with this unjust bill hanging over my head and no way to deal with it, I was beginning to worry that it would compromise my health.
I had begun paying into a centrelink payment plan of $100 a fortnight (minimum amount they would take for my bill amount) as I was afraid I would lose my good credit rating if I didn't. I finally received a call from the Minister's office saying that my case was going to be investigated and within a day or so received a call and online notification saying my bill had been waived. This experience has left me bitter with regards to centrelink, drained and disappointed that this can happen to me and obviously thousands of others, in Australia. I am now hearing in the media, information about centrelink administration from centrelink staff whistleblowers and when I look at my particular set of circumstances I feel that these allegations are very possibly true.
They are inept and questionable...and seemingly above the law.