This is how the Turnbull Government says “Merry Christmas” to some vulnerable Australians.
The computer errors may be the result of bungling but the vilification and denigration of poorer Australians is a deliberate political tactic.
Centrelink recipients across the region are being told to pay back false debts sometimes amounting to thousands of dollars because of a faulty computer algorithm.
The Federal Government and Centrelink have come under heavy criticism from all quarters over the automated system that has been used to match welfare recipients' reported income.
Amid all the anger the government agency began using Twitter to refer welfare recipients to crisis support hotline Lifeline as the hashtag #notmydebt began trending on the social media platform.
Centrelink’s software problems, like those of Queensland Health, the Census and Victoria Police before them, arise from pathologies created by the powerful labour hire and outsourcing industries.
Centrelink’s software invents second employers and additional income. Queensland Health bungled the pay of nurses and doctors and also sent them nasty legal letters. Queensland lost a staggering $1bn through that disaster. The census website system fell over.
These would be extraordinary mistakes even for a small business, and yet they’re being made by government departments with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend. How does this happen?
If the government was a private company it would go out of business or be shut down by regulators for fraud over the Centrelink debacle, says former Digital Transformation Office head Paul Shetler.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has launched an investigation into the Centrelink debt recovery debacle – which both major parties played a hand in creating.
Centrelink would be shut down for fraud for its conduct in the recent botched "debt" recovery efforts if it were a private company, according to the Commonwealth's former digital government chief.
Former Digital Transformation Office chief Paul Shetler also says the Turnbull government lacked the political will to push through its ambitious "digital transformation agenda".
As Centrelink workers deal with the fallout of the controversial debt clawback letters, it’s been revealed staff in the Orange office often fear for their safety.
The former head of the government's Digital Transformation Agency has said the error-rate within Centrelink's automated debt recovery system is so high it would send a commercial operation out of business.
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It beggars belief that this is a systems error. If this is the case, those responsible for the design and implementation of the system are unbelievably, inconceivably incompetent. Centrelink’s Hank Jongen claims the methodology hasn’t changed, but no one has explained why, if nothing has changed, the system has begun averaging annual earnings over every reporting fortnight and raising debts as a result.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has called on the Turnbull government to immediately suspend Centrelink's controversial automated debt recovery program, describing it as a "toxic mix of incompetence and cruelty" that has ruined Christmas for vulnerable Australians.
The federal government has hit back at Labor attacks over a $4 billion welfare crackdown, rejecting claims of a Centrelink “victim” and insisting he was never targeted by the automated data-matching system at the centre of the political dispute.
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For the Turnbull government these days, ineptitude comes in many forms, success in few. One of the latest examples where its performance has baffled the dwindling number of its supporters and brought smiles to the faces of its opponents is the decision to let Centrelink's computers loose on Australia's least wealthy and most vulnerable citizens in the weeks before Christmas.
Andrew Wilkie, the independent federal MP for Denison, said last week that some people who have, over the Christmas break, received aggressive letters from Centrelink are close to suicide.
It is not surprising, and it is shameful that it is so. It is also extraordinary that politicians like Christian Porter and Alan Tudge, the Ministers responsible for Centrelink, think its OK to boast about the recovery of debts from generally low-income Australians while their government does little or nothing about the fact that some corporations and many wealthy individuals in this country pay little or no tax.
The Turnbull government’s mass invoices – constructed from data matching to claim discrepancies exist with Centrelink’s casual, disabled and vulnerable income earners – are expected to be used across the entire pensioner and social security sector. New discrepancies can be created over a recipient’s claimed asset values to substantiate invoices for ‘over-payments’.
Bundaberg welfare recipients have taken to social media in anger and confusion over the Centrelink debt debacle.
Centrelink recipients across the region are being told to pay back false debts sometimes amounting to thousands of dollars because of a faulty computer algorithm.
The Centrelink debacle that’s slugged thousands of Aussies with unfair debt is the latest in a string of disasters in which technology has let us down - with devastating consequences.
The most frightening thing about the Centrelink malware debacle is the verve with which the government embraced it.
For the first (unexpectedly more bumper than ever) episode back after the holiday break, Jeremy is joined by Lyndsey Jackson of notmydebt.com.au to discuss this government's war on the poor, in particular its attack on anyone who's ever used Centrelink.
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Christmas for one South Australian high school student was ruined after Centrelink cut her payments without notice.
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"She [a Centrelink staff member] told me 15,000 other students had been cut off from the same day as me, and that broke my heart," she said.
The longer this mess drags on the more the public’s faith in a system designed to identify genuine rorters – who Human Services Minister Alan Tudge has warned face possible prison time – will be undermined.
Damaging criticism and publicity like this normally would have a minister rushing to initiate a review, or at the very least expressing regret for any (unintended) distress caused. But Mr Porter has remained his usual phlegmatic self, saying the letters sent initially to welfare recipients were "polite" and that only a "small" number of people had been asked to refund money they did not owe. He reiterated his belief that the program was working well, and said it would be extended further to recover nearly $4 billion in welfare debts over the next four years.
Labor’s leadership team of Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek pioneered the “robo-debt” data-matching system Centrelink is using to target current and former welfare recipients for apparently not declaring their income properly — but they now argue it should be suspended.
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“The automation of this process will free up resources and result in more people being referred to the tax garnishee process, retrieving more outstanding debt on behalf of taxpayers,” Mr Shorten said at the time.
Jayde Harvey, now 24, was shocked when she got a letter from Centrelink just before Christmas, asking her to clarify how much she earned when she worked part-time while in high school.
Similar letters have been sent to thousands of people across Australia in recent weeks as part of a new program to recover overpayments by linking welfare payments with records from the Australian Taxation Office.
Tony Barber survived a battle with cancer.
But now the 29-year-old has to battle a bureaucratic nightmare after receiving a Centrelink debt notice for $4500 in the lead-up to Christmas.
His is one of many complaints about the automated Centrelink system the federal government is using to claw back $4 billion in overpayments and the way the system calculates welfare recipients' debts