Centrelink is pursuing overpayments again
As we reported in December 2021, Services Australia granted welfare recipients, including Age Pensioners, a debt reprieve until January 2022. The Minister, Linda Reynolds, stated at the time that debt recovery programs would be paused until early January, with debt payments scheduled to restart in July this year. Reports last week reveal that Services Australia (the department responsible for Centrelink) is in the process of hiring private investigators to gather evidence on claimants who are suspected of wrongdoing. The planned surveillance is believed to include both cameras and audio bugging devices.
One major concern about any planned surveillance is, of course, the possibility of error. Enquiries into the ill-fated Robodebt automated recovery scheme revealed that mistakes were made in the pursuit of welfare overpayments and these mistakes had resulted in severe hardship for many of those concerned. A class action was successfully prosecuted against the Robodebt program, citing 470,000 wrongly issued debt notices. A settlement of $1.2 Billion is still being paid to members of this successful class action.
What do you think? Is this the right way to deal with overpayments, given the previous Robodebt failure?
If you want to check if you are receiving your correct entitlements you can do so using our free eligibility calculator.
I wish we had the ability to make sure Centrelink correct their errors etc
I recently received a letter from our famous agency, Centrelink requesting to check the exchange rate of our foreign pension. I had to do it for two of us: calculate including the value in the % for last 12 months! If this value is different, ± 5% have to be reported.
I found this exercise ridiculous!
How many oldies can this calculation?
Truly, I found one variation of ~A$23.
What about the big corporations, the rich not paying proper taxes? More $ to get back from them!
I am in the process of transitioning to retirement and have to apply for many Centrelink entitlements on line — This costly time consuming process transfer many of Centrelink’s cost to applicants and increases the risk of unintentional errors being made. Errors are not fraud. The entire application process needs to be reviewed to minimize the cost to Centrelink and to those it serves.
Chris, making the Age Pension universal would achieve this.
My age pension is reduced all the times.
Explanation given that was paid rent assistance back to 10
Years ago.
So after many years without any problems Centrelink is claiming that need to pay back more than 8,000
Very unfair
As someone who worked hard, and paid taxes my whole life I am very glad that they are chasing ‘wrong doers’ for defrauding the system. If people are doing wrong they should be caught and have to pay the money back.
Maybe if people did the right thing the system might not be so difficult.
Greed for government money has become rife in Australia, the entitlement displayed by people is disappointing and obnoxious.
Something not right in your life? It’s the governments fault!
Yes the government systems could be a lot better but we still are the lucky country.
Its seems to have become some kind of badge of honor to have never worked and diddled the system for your existence in this great country.
We should be grateful for the system we have, which protects us from poverty and ill health.
You said Protects us from poverty, obviously you do not include over 200,000 people living on the streets, people of all ages and also the ones who receive payments barely enough to survive on. Yes the lucky country. Sadly a lot of people are blind to reality.
”Greed for government money has become rife in Australia, the entitlement displayed by people is disappointing and obnoxious.” Let’s start chasing from the top down, shall we? After all – people are led by example.
No it is not fair. There is a power imbalance and they can stop or reduce your pension at any time. Recently mine was suspended because they couldn’t add up YTD figures. i kept having to ask them, please just read the numbers, there is no fraud. It took three months of no pension and RE involvement to solve the matter, which should never have arisen. Where’s the care and concern, what is their true responsibility?
I looked forward to a peaceful retirement. It is been anything but this, Centrelink having sent me a debt notice for $60,000 now $25,000 after taking it to the Australian Administrative Tribunal.
None of this would’ve occurred had Centrelink not made a mistake and I have no idea how to check on Centrelink.
Under the conservative governments it’s become very treacherous and extremely time-consuming not to speak of stressful.
Pensioners far and I looked upon as receiving “welfare”. This is an astonishing state of affairs
I wonder if any change of government would make any difference?