The Dept. of Human Services incorrectly sent out 10,000 "accounts payable notices" and did not inform the welfare recipients of its error

Senior government officials have confirmed 10,000 'robodebt' notices were accidentally sent to welfare recipients in April 2019 when they were meant to remain on hold for review.

Departmental bureaucrats discovered the error within two days and placed the alleged debts on hold.

However, the department did not contact those persons who had received these 10,000 "accounts payable notices".

To date only 200 welfare recipients who received these improper debt notices have contacted the Dept. of Human Services/Centrelink.

That leaves 9,800 current and/or former welfare recipients probably worrying themselves sick over a debt it is highly likely they don't actually owe. Readers can listen to the short ABC report here:

https://abcmedia.akamaized.net/radio/local_sydney/audio/201910/pam-2019-10-25-robodebt-estimates.mp3

In addition to this error, in seeking recovery of money allegedly owed by welfare recipients Centrelink deliberately sent out debt notices to 169 welfare recipients who were already dead, while it also approached representatives of “deceased customers” in 515 cases.

According to The Guardian on 25 October 2019, in a recent Senate Estimates hearing the Department of Human Services has also not ruled out targeting age pensioners and other vulnerable people as part of the controversial robodebt scheme, saying any decision to expand the scheme in order to meet budget targets would be made “further down the track”.

On 3 October 2019 the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) informed the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into Centrelink's compliance program that:

ACOSS has held deep concerns about Centrelink's compliance program, otherwise known as robo-debt—which I will refer to here mostly in that way—since its inception. Despite some improvements to the implementation of the program, two fundamental design flaws remain inherent. One is the use of the averaging of ATO-reported annual income over the period someone has received income support, which is leading to incorrect calculations of overpayments. The other is the reversal of the onus of proof, which requires people to disprove alleged debts on the basis of very limited information. Under the current system, an individual's earnings data is matched with ATO data through an automated process. Where a discrepancy is identified, an individual is invited to confirm or update their income. This may go back some years and be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for people to obtain the necessary information from previous employers. Where they don't provide the relevant information, the department uses averaged ATO data as a default. The department does this in full knowledge that's it's unlikely to produce an accurate or fair outcome, which its own debt recovery guidelines indeed warn. 

At present, there is a lack of transparency about the proportion and the number of debts raised as a result of ATO averaging processes, so we urge the committee, as part of this hearing, to seek information from the department for public release to inform this inquiry and the broader public debate about the policy. The robo-debt scheme also shifts the work of verifying income onto individuals, work that used to be done by the department, as well as shifting the onus of proof. As such, individuals are required to obtain historic payslips, bank statements and other records going back up to six years. If they are unable to do so, they risk incurring a debt erroneously. We note that Centrelink's previous guidelines advised people to keep employment records for six months, in stark contrast to the six-year period over which robo-debt ranges. This is deeply unfair. 

In addition to these fundamental design flaws, we hold concerns about the role of third party private companies in the compliance system, both as frontline staff in private service centres and in private debt collection agencies. We understand that to date one in three robo-debts have been sent to debt collectors. Direct engagement with people, often on low incomes and facing a range of life stresses, about their financial situation requires sensitivity and technical expertise. It's not appropriate for these functions to be outsourced to private operators who sit outside Centrelink, while Centrelink itself remains grossly understaffed. 

There are a range of other factors that compound unfairness of the current system. The first is that the government has extraordinary powers to enforce the debt owing to it, including to ban people from travelling internationally to garnish their tax returns and to charge interest on debt load. The automatic imposition of a debt recovery fee on debts prior to June 2017 adds further insult to injury for people affected. There is higher rate of erroneous debts calculated through the flawed data-matching algorithm, many of which will not be challenged and so we have no way of knowing, in fact, how many are in error, and the higher cost of administering the program at a time when our government says it doesn't have funds available to address other urgent priorities in social security systems. 

Finally, we'd like to remind the committee of the human impacts of this policy. Around a million income discrepancy notices have been issued since 2015 and half a million alleged it. And while every person's situation is different and not everybody is in a vulnerable situation, we know these notices have caused deep distress and anxiety for many people who've received them. Despite some exemptions, we know that they have been sent to people with mental health problems, people who've experienced trauma, people recently bereaved, people who are currently living on very low payments, people who are in financial hardship and people who are homeless. We also know that the impact has been devastating for many of those people, and they are very concerned at reports that the government might seek to narrow the range of available exemptions. We urge the committee to ensure that they hear from people directly affected by this scheme in the course of these hearings, including as witnesses. 

In closing, improvements to the implementation of the scheme, which we do acknowledge have not cured the fundamental design flaws at its heart, continue to cause great harm and distress. We urge the committee, therefore, to recommend suspension of the program and its replacement by a more transparent, fair, accurate and humane system of debt recovery

Seems Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's personal war on the poor and vulnerable may have its roots in the right-wing American culture he so admires

Stricter eligibility requirements when applying for Centrelink benefits, allowances and pensions. Reducing the scope of human intervention in decision making. Automated assessment of ongoing eligibility. Automatic suspension of cash transfers.

Sound familiar? Well it seems that the U.S.A. refined applying punitive measures to the poor and vulnerable long before Australia's right-wing warriors in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government began their all out class war.

American began limiting eligibility and applying algorithms in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The Guardian, 14 October 2019: 

All around the world, from small-town Illinois in the US to Rochdale in England, from Perth, Australia, to Dumka in northern India, a revolution is under way in how governments treat the poor. 

You can’t see it happening, and may have heard nothing about it. It’s being planned by engineers and coders behind closed doors, in secure government locations far from public view. 

Only mathematicians and computer scientists fully understand the sea change, powered as it is by artificial intelligence (AI), predictive algorithms, risk modeling and biometrics. But if you are one of the millions of vulnerable people at the receiving end of the radical reshaping of welfare benefits, you know it is real and that its consequences can be serious – even deadly. 

The Guardian has spent the past three months investigating how billions are being poured into AI innovations that are explosively recasting how low-income people interact with the state. Together, our reporters in the US, Britain, India and Australia have explored what amounts to the birth of the digital welfare state. 

Their dispatches reveal how unemployment benefits, child support, housing and food subsidies and much more are being scrambled online. Vast sums are being spent by governments across the industrialized and developing worlds on automating poverty and in the process, turning the needs of vulnerable citizens into numbers, replacing the judgment of human caseworkers with the cold, bloodless decision-making of machines. 

At its most forbidding, Guardian reporters paint a picture of a 21st-century Dickensian dystopia that is taking shape with breakneck speed. The American political scientist Virginia Eubanks has a phrase for it: “The digital poorhouse.” 

As one recipient described it: “You owe what you have eaten.” 

In the UK, we investigate the secure government site outside Newcastle where millions are being spent developing a new generation of welfare robots to replace humans. Private companies including a New York outfit led by the world’s first bot billionaire, are supercharging a process which has spawned a whole new jargon: “virtual workforce”, “augmented decision-making”, “robot process automation”. 

The government is rushing forward with its digital mission despite the pain already being inflicted on millions of low-income Britons by the country’s “digital by default” agenda. Claimants spoke of the hunger, filth, fear and panic that they are enduring.

In Australia, where the Guardian has reported extensively on robodebt, the scheme that has been accused of wrongly clawing back historic debts through a flawed algorithm, we now disclose that the government has opened a new digital front: using automation to suspend millions of welfare payments. Recipients are finding their money cut off without notice.

Read the full article here.

It is not hard to draw a line between Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's admiration for all things Republican and religiously conservative in America and his apparent desire to place all welfare recipients on the Indue Limited cashless debit card before the next federal election in 2022.

Scott Morrison's war on the poor is being expanded under the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Income Management to Cashless Debit Card Transition) Bill 2019 which is currently before the Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs which will report to the Australian Parliament on 7 November 2019.

To date no welfare recipients have made submissions to the Senate standing committee on this bill. I suspect that this is due in large measure to the fact that Centrelink in particular has released personal information about welfare recipients who have gone public in the past and, there is anecdotal information that certain recipients who have spoken out publicly about life on the cashless welfare card have been sanctioned in some manner.

Federal Liberal MPs dislike people calling a spade a spade

~~~~~~~~~~

"If the government actually though that calling it robodebt caused more anxiety, they'd have named it that themselves"  [@RichardAOB, 4 October 2019]

~~~~~~~~~~

The Guardian, 4 October 2019:

The Coalition’s controversial debt recovery scheme should not be called robodebt, Liberal MPs say, in part because the phrase is causing anxiety in the community.

A day after the Liberal senator Matt O’Sullivan told the first hearing of a Senate inquiry into the scheme “robodebt” was a “misnomer”, his colleague, Hollie Hughes, admonished representatives from Western Australia’s community legal centres for using the term.

Hughes also told the inquiry on Friday the term robodebt was “a bit of a misnomer, particularly under the current system”.

“And I think using that term is probably creating a bit more anxiety than is required,” Hughes said. “If we’re trying to reduce the anxiety around this, probably not using that term particularly in these sorts of settings would be helpful.”

Despite noting improvements to the program, including increased involvement from Centrelink staff and outreach to affected welfare recipients, the WA legal centres said on Friday that the scheme was still having an adverse impact on vulnerable people.

~~~~~~~~~~

"I actually agree with the politicians saying that ‘robodebt’ is a misnomer... it implies there was actually a debt in the first instance. Maybe ‘robotheft’, ‘robowehatepoorpeople’ or ‘robofuckyou’ would be more appropriate?”  [@LukeLPearson, 4 October 2019]

~~~~~~~~~~

Debt collector used by DHS-Centrelink to chase unproven robodebts being sued by Australia’s consumer watchdog for a raft of coercive and unconscionable practices

IT News, 24 September 2019: 

A debt collector recently awarded a $3.3 million contract by the Department of Human Services (DHS) to chase money for Centrelink is wholly owned by a company being sued by Australia’s consumer watchdog for a raft of coercive and unconscionable practices. 

In an embarrassing twist to the ongoing Robodebt controversy, iTnews can reveal ARL Collect (Pty Ltd), which is wholly owned by Queensland based Panthera Finance, snared a plum debt recovery deal from DHS just weeks before its parent company was hit by landmark legal action from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. 

The ACCC’s case against Panthera accuses the firm of coercing payments from people – including identity fraud victims – for bills they did not actually owe. 

The direct ownership link between the two companies, which technically are separate legal and financial entities, raises fresh questions around the adequacy of vetting and due diligence surrounding government outsourcing deals, especially those dealing with vulnerable people. 

The ACCC’s action against Panthera, lodged in the Federal Court on 24th July this year, sets out an appalling litany of allegations related to undue harassment and coercion, unconscionable conduct and false and misleading representation to consumers. 

They include forcing money from identity fraud victims by using credit default listings as leverage and follow consumer complaints made about Panthera. 

According to Department of Finance records, DHS published notification of the $3.3 million ARL Collect contract on 29th July; however the contract period is listed as running from 1st July 2019 to 30th June 2020, indicating the tender was let prior to commencement of action by the ACCC. 

The ACCC’s allegations against Panthera, ARL Collects’s owner, all stem from commercial recovery actions, namely attempts to collect on contested bills issued by utilities AGL, Origin Energy and Telstra, raising serious questions of governance and corporate culture. 

A particularly embarrassing coincidence for the government and DHS is that all the examples put forward to the court by the ACCC in its allegations arise from payment demands made by Panthera for bills that were not actually owed and actively disputed by those hit by recovery actions. 

The revelations that the ultimate owner of DHS’s contracted debt collector is a current target of regulatory action is another headache for the government as it vigorously defends its data matching-reliant enforcement regime. 

A class action now in the works against Robodebt being mounted by Gordon Legal also broadly makes its case along the lines of an unreasonable burden of proof being foisted on people labelled debtors, while organisations claiming to be creditors get away with questionable claims. 

The Department of Human Services, its minister Stuart Robert and Prime Minister Scott Morrison have steadfastly maintained welfare overpayment recovery mechanisms are subject to due administrative process, a stance that has done little to quell criticism of Robodebt, which has now become a political weapon. 

Irrespective of the politics, the ACCC’s case against Panthera is highly significant because it spotlights the poor conduct of some collection agencies. 

It also reveals how receivables ledgers of questionable data accuracy are on-sold and the way legitimately disputed debt is treated. 

And it goes deep into the hardball culture and often high pressure tactics of the darker corners of the collections industry, a sector that has been struggling to reform its image......

In one of the examples, a Queensland woman anonymised as “Witness A” disputed a $378 debt for an Origin electricity bill racked up under her name for an address in New South Wales where the woman had never lived. 

She had also never been a customer of Origin. After filing a complaint with the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) and supplying Panthera with the case reference number the debt collector still pursued her. 

“Witness A again informed them that she had never lived in NSW, she had provided an ACORN reference number and stated that she had never received Centrelink payments in her life, referring to the Centrelink deductions recorded on the Origin bills provided to her,” the ACCC court documents state. 

“Witness A provided Panthera with the details of the person the police had informed her was responsible for the Origin Debt, including that the person still resided at the NSW premises to which the electricity was supplied, and also with the relevant police officer’s contact information,” the ACCC’s court documents continue. 

Despite this, Panthera continued asking her for information she just did not have, the ACCC alleges.....

In another case a man dubbed "Witness B" told Panthera that he believed a Telstra mobile broadband account created in his name had been fraudulently obtained. 

Despite a police officer telling Panthera that she was “looking into fraud” in relation to the account “the man still had a credit default listed against his name.” What came next borders on extortion. 

“On 4 April 2017, a Panthera representative called Witness B’s financial advisor and stated that Panthera was aware of Witness B’s dispute and was investigating it, offered to negotiate a payment in order to secure the removal of the default listing and represented that Witness B would need to make a payment of $100 to Panthera in order for the default listing to be removed,” the ACCC’s court documents state. 

“This was in circumstances where the Panthera representative knew that Witness B’s account was in the process of being ‘written off’ by Panthera, but also knew that Witness B needed the default listing removed quickly because he was trying to obtain finance.” 

Even after paying the $100 and Panthera telling the man the default listing had been removed “as at September 2018 Witness B’s credit file still contained a default listing with respect to the Telstra Debt”.......

Read the full article here.

If you are a welfare recipient in any shape of form - be afraid, be very afraid

It appears in his profound ignorance and overwhelming arrogance Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison intends to privatize the welfare safety net....... 

Patreon, “Testing the limits of welfare in the age of the Prosperity Gospel”, 9 September 2019, excerpt:

Morrison has a very particular view of how welfare should be approached. On one level, it is a sort of neoliberal/austerity view, entirely at one with the direction of government policy since the 1980s.

But it is more complex that. Morrison seems to want to move to what we might call a post-neoliberal approach, with welfare built around financial instruments such as so-called Social Interest Bonds (SIBs)…..

“To put it another way, there is no money in ending poverty, but there is profit to be had in meeting metrics that break 'the intergeneral cycle of poverty and disadvantage.'

Regardless, the whole approach ties in completely with Morrison's view that, 'welfare must become a good deal for investors' and that 'we must make it a good deal' (emphasis added).

That is to say, to be a good deal for investors, various forms of control and discipline must be enacted upon welfare recipients in order to help ensure targets are met and profits are realised via instruments like SIBs.

Drug testing and cashless welfare cards are two ways of doing that, and that is why Scott Morrison is advocating them. He is laying the groundwork for the introduction of instruments such as SIBs.

In the meantime, he is more than happy for the State to be an 'enforcer' without them.

Morrison Government intends to go ahead with the drug testing of welfare recipients

"…the bill is not written like a research trial, it's written as policy by stealth…and if this is about introducing new policy, then…it misunderstands the nature of drug problems and drug dependence." [UNSW Professor Lisa Maher, Committee Hansard, 23 April 2018, p.18] 

According to data.gov.au, between January 2017 and and December 2018 there were 5.82 million Australian citizens receiving Newstart Allowance unemployment benefits for all or part of that period.

Based on the New Zealand experience of widespread drug testing, it is highly likely that just one year into any Australian scheme which regularly drug tests Newstart recipients running costs would not be less than $3.27 billion.

When you add those receiving Youth Allowance,  then drug testing and intervention costs would run even higher.

Even the limited trial currently proposed by the Morrison Government would in all probability cost somewhere in the vicinity of $20 million in its first year.

In the health care sector there is almost universal condemnation of the Morrison Government's drug testing bill as being either unworkable in practice as a reliable drug detection scheme or ineffective as a method of medical intervention.

Indeed, it is reported that Clinical Associate Professor Adrian Reynolds, an expert in addiction medicine, has stated that the drug testing trial is 'unlikely to bring about any sustained changes in patients' drug use behaviours and may even be counterproductive.'

Nor does it appear that there is any solid evidence that such a testing regime actually assists unemployed people to either find work or successfully access treatment. 

Given how many drug or alcohol dependent individuals currently cannot get a timely appointment or find a inpatient bed in the est. 952 publicly funded drug & alcohol agencies across Australia and the fact that the majority of both private and publicly funded agencies are in large metropolitan areas, this lack of evidence comes as no surprise.

Here is just one submission made to the Senate Inquiry into the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Drug Testing Trial) Bill 2018 in April 2018 by the peak medical practitioners organisation.

Social Services Legislation Amendment (Drug Testing Trial) Bill 2018 (Australian Parliament) by clarencegirl on Scribd

http://www.scribd.com/document/420530854/Social-Services-Legislation-Amendment-Drug-Testing-Trial-Bill-2018-Australian-Parliament

Tweet of the Week

Here's part of @larissawaters' incredible speech about raising Newstart. Drop everything and watch this. #auspol pic.twitter.com/ZdK9WodIsS

— sam langford (@_slangers) July 22, 2019

This week, 40 billion tons of ice will melt in Greenland as the European heat wave moves north -- enough to measurably raise global sea levels.

This single heat wave will create a permanent change in our oceans that will linger for millennia.

We are in a climate emergency. https://t.co/ypkH6093aU

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) July 29, 2019

Australian Prime Minister Morrison's relentless hammering of the poor and vulnerable set to continue?

The Guardian, 7 July 2019:

The Morrison government says it remains committed to a plan criticised as “brutal” to dock the welfare of those who repeatedly fail to pay state fines, and may still proceed with cuts to student payments claimed by the unemployed, the disabled and sole parents.

The Coalition introduced a number of welfare measures in 2017 which drew the ire of social service groups but ultimately never came into effect because the government failed to win the support of the Senate or the states and territories.

Guardian Australia reported this month that internal documents suggested the contentious plan to drug test welfare recipients was not a priority, but the government has insisted it remains on its agenda.

Other welfare proposals from the last parliament included about $90m in cuts to student payments, legislation to automatically deduct rent from welfare recipients living in social housing, which critics said could put family violence survivors at risk, and a plan to impose the “demerit point” compliance scheme on those doing the remote work-for-the-dole program, which has seen payment suspensions surge…...

But the spokesman did confirm the government still intended to create the scheme to automatically dock 15% of payments for those who have unpaid fines…...

“The Encouraging Lawful Behaviour of Income Support Recipients proposal remains government policy and requires legislative approval,” Ruston’s spokesman said…..

Labor had opposed the cuts to the $208-a-year pensioner education supplement and the $32.20-a week education entry payment, which are intended to help low-income people with the cost of study.

The changes would save the budget $95m over five years, but the opposition said the policy would hurt people with disability, carers, sole parents and the unemployed.

The Australian Council of Social Service has previously lashed the plan to dock welfare payments from people with court-ordered state fines as “particularly brutal”.

The proposal would automatically dock 15% of an income support payment, but critics say it will push vulnerable people into homelessness.

Welfare groups including the Australian Unemployed Workers Union have also expressed grave concerns about a plan announced last year to link Newstart recipients to farm work using the national database.

The unemployed would face losing their welfare payments for four weeks if they turned down what the government described as a “suitable job without reasonable excuse”.

The department of employment confirmed the policy would begin in July next year.

Then there is this.....

Encouraginglawful behaviour of income support recipients 2018 Budget 

Dozens of Centrelink clients have had their names published on Facebook by a Commonwealth-funded work-for-the-dole provider

ABC News, 26 April 2019:

Dozens of Centrelink clients have had their names published online in what has been described as a "shocking" abuse of privacy.

A Commonwealth-funded work-for-the-dole provider uploaded lists of people who were required to attend client meetings to a public Facebook page.

"We are at a loss as to why anyone would post about workers' appointments online," union official Lara Watson said.

"We were shocked at the publication of names on a social media platform."

The incidents are the latest to emerge from the Government's flagship remote employment scheme, the Community Development Programme (CDP).

Nearly 50 people from the Northern Territory community of Galiwinku, located 500 kilometres east of Darwin, were affected.

The job service provider, the Arnhem Land Progress Association (ALPA), established the social media page apparently with the intention of uploading such lists.

"Welcome to our Facebook page where we will be posting appointments, courses and CDP information," it wrote last month.

The two sheets of names were posted to the Galiwinku CDP page on March 11 and 12.

Both images were shared to another local Facebook group titled Elcho Island Notice Board, which has more than 2,000 members.

One CDP insider denounced the online uploads, saying they were unprecedented and could have placed job seekers at risk.

"If a person has a family violence order in place to protect them, then perhaps the perpetrator would know where she was," said the source, who requested anonymity.

"It advertised that a person is accessing welfare services, and unfortunately in Australia there's discrimination against people accessing welfare services.

"People can be bullied for being unemployed."

The Galiwinku CDP page appears to have since been removed from the internet but the organisation denied any wrongdoing.

"We do not believe that this is a breach of confidentiality," an ALPA spokeswoman said.....

"All ALPA CDP participants give … media consent when they commence as a participant."......

Tweet of the Week

During the last LNP gov, Centrelink required my blind son to have vision tests to see if his sight improved. He was born without eyes. https://t.co/cSCjxsPmvt

— EggShellBlonde (@HeyMum3) April 9, 2019

Tweet of the Week

In #SenateEstimates right now they're discussing Robodebt & a spate of suicides, this public servant is saying that because suicide victims are no longer here, by definition, then any causality cannot be proven between the Robodebt and the suicide.

I shit you not.#auspol pic.twitter.com/M2Fqb9JS55

— Bee (@BelindaJones68) February 21, 2019

Sad statistics are generated by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's war on the poor & vulnerable

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..........