Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I've written again to the Commonwealth Ombudsman, asking for another investigation into the debt notices being sent to thousands of unsuspecting Australians as part of the federal government's social welfare debt recovery program. I've done this because I've been approached by a whistleblower, one with a good understanding of the debt recovery process, who has provided me with remarkable examples of some of the ongoing flaws in the program. This leaves me in no doubt whatsoever that the program is indeed deeply flawed and deeply unfair.

For example, debts are regularly duplicated and even triplicated simply because the same employer has been entered into the Centrelink system differently. For instance, 'McDonald's' or 'McDonald's family restaurant' might variously have been entered for the same worker at the same McDonald's outlet. The problem is that this sort of error goes unrectified because there's no mechanism for cross-checking other than manually, and that's only ever undertaken on an irregular basis.

This whistleblower has also told me that people who provide pay slips to substantiate income are repaying more to Centrelink than those who provide bank statements, simply because net income on bank statements is not grossed up. This can result in hundreds of dollars difference in debt repayments. This practice is made even worse by the fact that Centrelink asks for pay slips but accepts bank statements, the result being that those able to do Centrelink's bidding end up in effect penalised.

Moreover, there's the lack of transparency and communication about how debts are calculated. I provided the Ombudsman with an example of a debt notice given to one of my constituents, in order to illustrate the problem. In this case, the debt from 2011 to 2016 is nearly $16,000, and Centrelink demanded full payment within about three weeks after the debt notice was received. I don't know about you, Deputy Speaker, but if I received an alleged bill for nearly $16,000 I'd want to know a heck of a lot about it, like how it was calculated, because there's no way a person can realistically identify problems with a debt in the absence of any information or evidence.

I've had countless people in my office literally sobbing because of this Centrelink robo-debt nonsense, or so stressed they can hardly breathe, or so frustrated because they believe they've done the right thing and are struggling to prove their innocence but can't get a straight answer from Centrelink about how the debt was calculated. The government must stop this program and sort it out. And it must do so now, because there's simply no so-called saving when in reality it's costing the community so very, very much.