The tactics used by centrelink, at the time, caused me to feel very stressed and agitated. I have some minor mental health diagnoses in my history, including depression & schizophrenia, but havent been seriously affected for years.
During the process of clearing up this matter with employees of centrelink as well as dun & bradstreet, I felt anxious at times, often depressed & deflated at the lack of ability of the employees to add or even view relevant information on my file, and not to mention ever "aware" of the imposing presence of the outsourced debt collectors looking to resolve their client's claimed debt.
This stress, has in one way or another affected my family including three children under the age of eight. I am not claiming that it is a direct result of the debt debarcle, but I do believe that it did play a significant role in pushing me & my partner of ten years, and mother of my children, apart. We are currently considering separation as the only way forward for our family.
I don't believe the current government have handled it at all. I think they have set up the program as though it was a bomb or a scam email virus: they have hit send & not wanted to touch it since, in effect washing their hands of responsibility and duty to the Australian people.
It still turns my mind and stomach watching people like George Brandis on qanda last night, who pretend to blame the Labor party for what is going on. It is classic manipulation of people. They are treating Australia as a media experiment.
Fox news' Roger Ailes himself claims that "the truth is whatever people will believe". The Liberal party's only asset that it brings to governance is its ability to lie to its people & make them believe (which, it isn't doing a great job at). The government is using panic mongering, to scare people in to a desired result; character assassination & blaming the oppositions for the mess government is apparently having to clean up; projection & flipping, again to shift blame to the opposition; rewriting history, evident in their arguments against low emission energy particularly on qanda last night; bullying... I was the victim of this myself when the government accused me of fraudulent centrelink claims.. scapegoating/othering, populism, confusion, saturation and diversion just to name... well a lot..
I have strayed from the topic, but it is the cumulative effect of my debt situation as well as the treatment of people by the government's various transparent techniques which is the cause of my resurgence in emotional & psychological state of mind & probably my resulting circumstances.