A crackdown on Centrelink payments and the issuing of large debt notices to unsuspecting recipients was designed by a "dunderhead" and is leaving people "frightened," federal MP Andrew Wilkie says.
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Wilkie also took aim at Centrelink for forcing recipients to prove they were entitled to welfare, placing the onus on the person to prove their innocence and avoid having to pay back their payments.
"There is a problem with the philosophy behind it because it is assuming that people are guilty until they can prove themselves innocent," he said. "These debt notices are going back as far as six years, and often people's employers six years ago aren't even in business, so it is a ludicrous request or demand from, demand or attack from Centrelink that people somehow get hold of pay slips from back to six years ago."