The stories of Australians targeted by Centrelink with dodgy debt notices haven’t abated, and the experiences show that the government’s assurances of fixes in the system haven’t led to a more efficient or humane system. Blogger Andie Fox wrote a comment piece for the Fairfax papers on February 6, outlining her experience with Centrelink: her ex-partner hadn’t lodged tax returns, which meant Centrelink’s automatic data matching system tallied up a debt in Fox’s name for Family Tax Benefit she had claimed. Fox mentioned that privacy laws had hampered her ability to prove her relationship was over and that her ex-partner’s actions shouldn’t impinge on her. Yesterday, The Canberra Times published a piece by columnist Paul Malone with the headline “Centrelink is an easy target for complaints but there are two sides to every story“. The supposed second side of Fox’s story was explained by Malone
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