Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison has been a
Cabinet Minister since 18.9.2013, was Minister for Social Services from
23.12.2014 to 21.9.2015, then Treasurer from 21.9.2015 to 26.8.2018 and now Prime
Minister of Australia since 24.8.2018 – these are the sad statistics he leaves
in his wake.
The Australian, 21 February 2019:
As Department of Human
Services secretary Renee Leon faced heated questioning about the controversial
“robodebt” program — which averages reported income and generates debts to
current and former welfare recipients — she said it is not known whether people
have taken their own lives due to the program.
“There is not an
elevated death rate among the cohort who have received a debt notice. It’s not
to say we are not troubled that people die,” Ms Leon said…
Greens Senator Rachel
Siewert said the numbers are particularly troubling because 663 people out of
the 2030 had “vulnerability indicators” attached.
Of the 2,030 people who died after receiving a Centrelink
Online
Compliance Intervention letter (‘robodebt’ ) which was generated sometime
between July 2016 to October 2018:
102 were aged
16-25 years;
327 were aged
26-35 years;
347 were aged
36-45 years;
466 were aged
46-55 years;
536 were aged
56-65 years;
251 were aged
66-80 years; and
1 was aged 81-100
years.
By gender 637 of these welfare recipients were Female and 1,393 Male.
“If death rates remained
similar throughout the period July 2016 - October 2018 ... approximately 6% of
all deaths of 16-35 year olds in Australia occurred for people who were subject
to Centrelink #robodebt compliance.” [Dr Ben Eltham on Twitter,
22 February 2019]
BACKGROUND
Gilbert Sullivan QC weiting in the Herald
Sun, 21 February 2019:
The Model Litigant
Policy of the Commonwealth is a direction issued by the Attorney-General under
the Judiciary Act.
The claims reported to
have been made by Centrelink are said to target 1.5 million people and aim to
claw back $4.6 billion in what are alleged to be overpayments of welfare.
The claims date back to
2010 and Centrelink demands the repayment of what it alleges to be overpayments
caused by the understatement of income; but it knows very well that it is
unable to prove these claims.
Centrelink has destroyed
its records and is entirely dependent on information obtained from the
Australian Taxation Office. It divides the gross annual income obtained in this
way by 26 to calculate what it terms an “apportioned actual income”.
It then proceeds to claim
the difference between the fortnightly income declared by the payee and the
apportioned actual income as an understatement by the recipient which it then
claims as a debt.
It is only by sighting
pay-slips or bank statements that the accuracy of the declared fortnightly
income can be verified. Centrelink’s claims rest on it proving that the
fortnightly income was falsely declared.
It can only succeed if
it can prove this on the balance of probabilities. The ATO information on its
own is worthless and needs a point of comparison in the form of contemporaneous
records. Annual income does not translate into fortnightly income.
The absurdity of this
methodology is obvious.
A full-time student in
2010 on a youth allowance may well have had a part-time job to support their
studies. Some weeks they may have earned, say $150, other weeks nothing.
They may have entered
the work force full-time in the last two months of the financial year and
earned say, $8000.
Dividing the yearly
income by 26 cannot establish a dishonest understatement for the weeks the
student earned $150 or nothing. Without the contemporary records, no
understatement can be proved.
This methodology is in
breach of model litigant obligations in a number of respects.
First, the mathematical
basis underpinning it is invalid and known to be so by Centrelink; and the
maintenance of a claim known to be invalid is a fundamental breach of the
obligation to act as a model litigant.
Second, to imagine that
casual employees retain pay slips from 2010 is ludicrous; many of the employers
from that time no longer exist and it is inconceivable that anyone can produce
pay-slips.
Further, while some bank
records are obtainable, they are archived and expensive to obtain. Placing the
onus on a recipient to procure bank statements is yet a further breach of model
litigant obligations.
There is no reason why
Centrelink could not obtain these records by subpoena or otherwise.
Furthermore, the actions of Centrelink reverse the onus of proof which, of
itself, is a breach of model litigant obligations.
MammaMia, 21 February 2019:
“It was demeaning,
embarrassing, and if it wasn’t for my son… I considered suicide.”
“It was dehumanising. I
had only lost my husband months before… I was grieving.”
These two sentences
represent how two women, from two different walks of life, in separate states
felt – when they received a Centrelink
debt notice.
Or more exactly what
happened when they tried to deal with the fallout of a
Centrelink debt notice……
The Centrelink letters
are sent out through an automated system. In the old system, it equated to
about 20,000 a year, but thanks to a new system in 2016 – it’s generating
20,000 letters a week.
Gabriella* received one
of those letters just last year.
She received it when she
was trying to come to terms with the death of her husband who had died in a
boating accident a few months before.
She was left with two
young children trying to work out how to move on with life.
She had never received
anything from Centrelink, she hadn’t needed to. But Centrelink had sent her
$13,000 in weekly increments, and they wanted their money back.
“The stress… I was
already dealing with enough… I knew I didn’t owe them money,” she told Mamamia.
Turns out Centrelink had
been sending her money that she hadn’t applied for – which had been bouncing
back for months.
“I made a phone call
first, they realised they’d made a mistake. But she [the person on the phone]
couldn’t fix it.”
She was given a
different number.
“I spent hours on the
telephone waiting for them to answer [to help]. It’s impossible to get
through,” explained Gabriella.
So instead, she was
forced to take a day off work and go into the Centrelink office itself.
“She looked at me like I
was lying,” Gabriella told Mamamia, of the moment she explained her
story – yet again.
Gabriella is most
frustrated at the time and effort she had to put in to fix this wrong. A wrong
that was made by an automated letter, and which cost her a days’ wage, and
almost cost her $13,000.
“I am grieving, but I am
pretty stable… my head is pretty OK. But there are people who get these letters
and they are not OK,” said a teary Gabriella.
“I am actually in the
mental health industry, so I am probably more equipped than a lot at noticing
triggers in myself. But what if I wasn’t?
“My situation never
should have happened, if there had been a human being looking at my account
they would have realised it was bouncing back.”
“It was dismay. It was a
shock to the system. It is scaremongering, they don’t explain anything, and
it’s very… dehumanising,” she said of her experience..........
No comments:
Post a Comment