9 News, 10 December 2018:
Centrelink’s robo-debt
recovery scheme was intended to seek out and destroy debts, but instead it’s
thrown more than 200,000 Australians into financial turmoil.
Now, Victoria’s former
head prosecutor, QC Gavin Silbert, is lending his voice and fighting back
against the controversial system which aims to claw back up to $4.5 billion in
welfare overpayments.
“I think it’s illegal
and I think it’s scandalous. In any other situation, you’d call it theft. I
think they’re bullying very vulnerable people,” Mr Silbert told A Current
Affair.
“If debts are owed to
the public purse they should be paid, they should be pursued. These are not
such debts,” he said.
He’s teamed up with
Melbourne-based solicitor Jeremy King to take a pro bono case to the Federal
Court which, if successful, could derail the robo-debt scheme and see thousands
of debts wiped.
“I hope this would set a
precedent to show that the way this robo-debt scheme had been rolled out is not
in accordance with the law and all of the other debts that have been sent out
to people are not in accordance with the law,” Mr King said....
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
2 December 2018:
Gavin Silbert, QC, who
retired as the state's chief crown prosecutor in March, has accused the
Department of Human Services of ignoring its legal obligations and acting like
a bully towards some of the nation's most vulnerable people.
A potential legal
challenge could have significant implications for future enforcement of the
robo-debt program, which aims to claw back up to $4.5 billion in welfare
overpayments with more than 1.5 million "compliance interventions".
Mr Silbert became embroiled
in the dispute when someone he knew was issued with a demand to repay a debt of
$10,230.97, which the department claimed was overpaid by Centrelink between
2010 and 2013.
He has provided pro bono
advice and helped prepare correspondence to the department, which repeatedly
asked for an explanation on how the debt was calculated.
However, the
department's compliance branch has ignored nine letters between May and
November 2018 that requested additional information. Last week, it made threats
to impose interest charges on the original debt.
"Other than the
bald assertion that I have a debt, I have never received any details of how the
debt is alleged to have arisen or anything which would enable me to verify or
understand the demand made of me," Mr Silbert's client wrote on June 7.
In another letter, Mr
Silbert's client wrote: "There is not a court in the country that will
uphold your demands for interest in the absence of fundamental details of how
the amount is alleged to have arisen."
The dispute escalated
further when the department engaged debt collection agency Dun &
Bradstreet, which threatened Mr Silbert's client with a "departure
prohibition order" that would prevent him travelling overseas.
Mr Silbert is keen to
launch Federal Court action to test the legal basis of the robo-debt program
and the government's apparent unwillingness to provide particulars.
"I'm itching to get
this before a court," he told Fairfax Media.
He said legislation that
regulates data-matching technology requires the department to "give
particulars of the information and the proposed action" before it can
recover overpayments.
The robo-debt program,
introduced by the Coalition government, calculates a former welfare recipient's
debt by taking a fortnightly average rather than discovering the exact amount
that was claimed.
The department was
forced to concede it was no longer in possession of the original claims made to
Centrelink by Mr Silbert's friend, after he made requests under
freedom-of-information laws.
No comments:
Post a Comment