I am a 28 year old male. When I was 16 years old Centrelink gave me a debt for $7000 for an apparent over-payment. They made the claim that I had intentionally received a higher amount of pay than I was eligible for. This came as some shock due to me having been on what I thought was the same payment I always had been and due to the numerous times my father and I had visited the Centrelink office to give them his tax details which included me and him listing our address as the same address on several different forms. I disputed it as I felt it was unfair to give someone that young a debt and I felt that I hadn't done anything to incur the debt. I took it to the tribunal, they were very difficult about releasing any documentation to us but when they finally did we found a discrepancy in their files. several of the letters they claimed that had been sent out weren't in their records. So we argued that they hadn't sent us the correct information and that they had several forms from the period in question that had mine and my fathers address as the same. They then admitted fault to that and ruled that I had to pay them $7000 anyway. This lead me to fall into a deep depression. I wanted to be a musician. So I tried to just ignore it and go on with my work. Despite the debt I managed to run a band for 5 years and release an album each year for that time but because I was paying off this huge debt I didn't feel like I was going anywhere. The music stopped being an effective distraction and I started to become self destructive. I became angry with the world in general, cynical and even mean to some of my closest friends. I couldn't concentrate on anything for long. I turned to drugs and started to feel like I never really had any options to begin with. Luckily during this period I met some other pretty strange souls and I managed to get a little bit of work in the entertainment scene. I say luckily because nearly every year Centrelink sends me another letter telling me that I owe another $1000 or $2000 dollars and they rarely give any details on where these magical numbers are being plucked from. Then I made a terrible mistake. When I was about 21 I crashed my car. The thing was I couldn't always afford to keep my insurance up to date all the time due to this debt I had being paid off. And I guess because I was in such a strange state of mind by this time I didn't think about it as much as I should have. So suddenly I'm in debt for another $10,000. Now granted this was technically my fault but I believe that the emotional stress that I have experienced my entire adult life definitely amplified the experience. Not to mention how much easier it would be to deal with one debt that you know is your fault. Now they are saying they they won't be letting people leave the country who have large debts. And to that I would say that they have put me in a position where that has been looking pretty bleak for a long time now anyway. Debt affects every part of your life in a very real way.
Recently I recieved another letter stating that I owed centrelink an additional $3800. The letter did not in any way indicate the reasons for such a debt and when I looked up the period mentioned I found that I did owe the Tax department $600. the $3800 was an arbitrary number seemingly plucked from the ether.
I'll leave my stories about Joblink Plus for another time...
I feel like it's definitely time for a very big change in the way that the government views the poor. How is it fair to so heavily tax the poor while the rich and the so called "holy" don't have to pay a cent. If the government actually wanted to fix the problem they could in a heart beat. It's time we stopped listening to excuses and started asking some hard questions and demanding some answers. It should not be allowed for any organisation to harvest debts.