in 2017 I was sent a letter wanting to confirm my employment dates between the years of 2011-2017. During this period I had worked for three different employees, all on a casual basis, I never worked permanent hours, my earnings always fluctuated. I was a full time uni student receiving youth allowance, I then went to part time uni and received new start, then back to full time study and received youth allowance. After sending them 400 plus pages of my bank statements as I did not keep payslips from 2011 I called Centrelink to find out what was taking so long, as I hadn't heard from them since I submitted my bank statements. Over the phone a Centrelink Officer said she was "looking at my account" and stated, "my employment details have been wrongly submitted twice'' following with, "you have been overpaid only about $400-$500 which you will receive a letter about. The next letter I received was telling me I was owing a debt of 10,000. I appealed once and was rejected, appealed to the AAT, rejected the first time and have sought to appeal again to the AAT, however I have received a phone call from a lawyer from Centrelink offering me a settlement fee of 5,400. They have not stated how they arranged that figure, but have stated they want me to settle rather than go forward to the AAT as it "costs the department a lot of money".
The Government as not 'handled' this process at all. How they can let this extortion go on without any proper evidence is ludicrous. There needs to be a call for a class action to finally eradicate this robodebt.