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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 CPSU has urged the Turnbull Government to urgently implement the key recommendations of a Senate inquiry into the Centrelink robo-debt debacle, with the program still in force and now being rolled out to target pensioners.

Social services minister says debt recovery system criticised in Senate inquiry is tackling ‘a massive amount of overpayments’ to claimants

A Senate inquiry has called for Centrelink’s controversial automated debt recovery system to be suspended until its many flaws can be resolved.
The inquiry released its report on Wednesday night, which made 21 recommendations for fixing the robo-debt system.
The inquiry has urged all debts calculated using the error-prone “income averaging” process to be reassessed. It also called for a redesign of the system with a robust risk assessment process.

Anglicare Australia has called for the Centrelink automated debt recovery process to be suspended. The call is made ahead of the release of the Senate Inquiry’s robodebt report.

The St Vincent de Paul Society has renewed calls on the Federal Government to immediately end the robo-debt program following the Senate Inquiry into its disastrous effects on people’s lives.

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.
[...]
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.”

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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The office of Human Services Minister Alan Tudge has refused to release more than a dozen documents related to his decision to release personal information on a critic of his robo-debt notice system on the grounds it is legally privileged and would disclose personal information.
After months of searching, Crikey finally managed to track down the advice Tudge was relying on when his office released the personal information of blogger Andie Fox to a Canberra Times journalist, but now his office won’t hand it over.

The Turnbull Government’s disastrous robo-debt system will soon target aged pensioners according to the Department of Human Services.
From 1 July this year the deeply flawed robo-debt system will seek to recoup nearly $1 billion from the pockets of pensioners.