I was sent a letter advising that I owed close to $1500, including the recovery fee. I immediately went to check my on line Centrelink account and found that these dates are not available on my account any longer. I completed the employment assessment and it came out with the same result. I called compliance and at that time noticed that one of the agencies I worked for had incorrect dates. It said that I had worked for them for a full 12 months when in fact it was only 1 month. I corrected it and was advised by the girl in compliance that all I needed to provide was the first pay slip as this had my YTD earnings on it. I was then contacted by a very rude lady from compliance that advised me that I had to provide ALL my payslips! I tried to do this via the Centrelink portal and it would not work. She told me to use Firefox instead of Safari, as I have a Mac I am not able to download Firefox. I saved all the payslips to my dropbox and then downloaded Firefox to my iPad and began the tedious process of sending all my payslips. This was completed on November 24 and I waited to hear back. I realised I hadn't heard anything in early January and logged on to see if anything had been done and noticed that this appeal had been CANCELLED!! I then sent yet another appeal on January 11 and I'm still waiting to hear back.. I have since had to start receiving Newstart again, I lost a permanent job 2 and half years ago due to company change and have not been able to secure a permanent job since. I also suffer from severe depression and have not had a good time of it since my last contract ended on December 23. I have cried myself to sleep most nights worrying that I will be evicted as I can't afford my rent on Newstart and then having this debt hanging over my head makes it worse. I was given a Government Security Clearance at my last job and if this goes any further I risk losing it, thus risk not being able to get decent job. Most nights I go to bed hoping that I won't wake up the next day....
the government needs a kick up the arse for this. They are preying on the most vulnerable in the community and causing undue stress to the elderly, sick and low income earners that already have more stress than they can handle. The quicker this government is kicked out, the better off we will be.