Australian Minister for Social Services Christian Porter is quick to point the finger but often very slow with concrete answers, so it is always a boon when annual departmental reports are published.
In September 2017 the latest DSS annual report was published.
Although carefully disguised in the wording "waived or written off"; by adding the 2016-17 annual report's financial statements together with the previous year’s annual report, one finds that the admitted amount of false client debt generated by Centrelink’s disastrous attempt to match Australian Taxation Office data with its own client records could possibly be as high as $264.645 million over a two financial year period.
As challenging a Centrelink debt letter was a distressing and often extremely difficult obstacle course for many welfare recipients, these hundreds of millions of dollars represent the determination of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians to fight back against false claims made on their wallets by government and the besmirching of their reputations.
On 26 October 2017 The Canberra Times reported that; Human Services official Jason McNamara told a Senate estimates hearing that in 202,000 cases where the department finalised the debt amount, 49,000 welfare recipients who received letters since the 'robo-debt' program started in July 2016 were found to owe nothing.
That means that 25.25% of these 202,000 debt notices were false claims as the Centrelink client was found to owe nothing.
In July and August this year Centrelink sent out a total of 114,000 debt letters.
At least est. 28,785 of these letters will probably represent a false claim of debt.
I hope all Centrelink clients who received one of these letters are querying each and every one.
On 26 October 2017 The Canberra Times reported that; Human Services official Jason McNamara told a Senate estimates hearing that in 202,000 cases where the department finalised the debt amount, 49,000 welfare recipients who received letters since the 'robo-debt' program started in July 2016 were found to owe nothing.
That means that 25.25% of these 202,000 debt notices were false claims as the Centrelink client was found to owe nothing.
In July and August this year Centrelink sent out a total of 114,000 debt letters.
At least est. 28,785 of these letters will probably represent a false claim of debt.
I hope all Centrelink clients who received one of these letters are querying each and every one.
BACKGROUND
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