Centrelink's 'robo-debt' effort should stop immediately, a Parliamentary committee says, after finding the program had a "profoundly negative impact on the lives of thousands of Australians."
The federal government has been urged to suspend Centrelink's controversial robo-debt program until problems are fixed.
The Australian Federal Police will not be pursuing Labor's allegations that I broke privacy law.
The AFP evaluated the referral from the Labor Party. The Labor Party alleged that I had disclosed protected information without authorisation. The AFP has today advised that it will not be investigating further.
The Senate inquiry into Alan Tudge’s bungled robo-debt disaster has handed down a scathing report of the system, finding that it was doomed from its inception despite claims from the government that the system was “working well”.
Social services minister says debt recovery system criticised in Senate inquiry is tackling ‘a massive amount of overpayments’ to claimants
A Senate committee has excoriated the controversial Centrelink 'robodebt' compliance system, calling for a radical overhaul of the welfare debt recovery program including an immediate re-assessment of invoices and recommending the entire scheme be halted until issues are ironed out.
A Labor- and Greens-dominated Senate committee has called on the Government to suspend Centrelink's controversial debt recovery program until it reconciles "a fundamental lack of procedural fairness".
This is the third feature in Ben Eltham’s 2017 investigation into Centrelink’s robo-debt program. The first article in the series was published in January, and the second article in March.
Centrelink’s sprawling data-matching empire is opaque, error-prone and almost completely impossible to understand, writes Ben Eltham. And it’s expanding across government programs and agencies.
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After listening to weeks of harrowing testimony, Siewert has found the Senate Inquiry a draining experience.
“You come out of those hearings and you feel really drained. The evidence we hear is very distressing – hearing of people’s experiences and feeling their sense of powerlessness and despair.”
A Senate inquiry into the so-called robo-debt saga handed down its final report on Wednesday evening, after conducting hearings across the country.
The committee urged the government to put the program on hold until "a fundamental lack of procedural fairness" was addressed.
It handed down 21 recommendations aimed at fixing the "broken" program.
But Human Services Minister Alan Tudge, who is responsible for Centrelink, has shot down the report.
With complaints of engaged signals and long wait times, the human services minister, Alan Tudge, told Raf Epstein if people are not getting through to Centrelink on the phone they could try going to their local office because "typically you wait about 10 minutes".
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