Centrelink's contentious automated debt recovery program was given a minor facelift on Monday. The assumption that failure to respond to an initial review letter constitutes admission of overpayment (and the automatic triggering of debt-recovery processes) has been dropped, and welfare recipients will instead be offered the option of an internal review into their situation before payment demands are made. This will be conditional on them being able to prove they received no prior letter.
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Centrelink is also promising to cross-check the addresses of welfare recipients with electoral rolls to ensure letters do not go astray (as they have in many instances), to include 1800 numbers on correspondence so that people call compliance teams directly without the need for lengthy delays, and to simplify the language used in the letters for ease of understanding.
In his media statement announcing the "refinements" on Monday, Human Services Minister Alan Tudge skated around the question of why these features were not incorporated into the original debt recovery strategy. But it's a query that ought to be canvassed given the distress and alarm that thousands of Centrelink customers claim they have experienced on receiving notification they owed substantial amounts of money to the Commonwealth.
Last year's announcement that the Turnbull government planned to claw back $4 billion in welfare overpayments over four years was generally well received – and supported by federal Labor. Evidence is mounting, however, that the planning and implementation of the program was barely adequate, and that Centrelink was not given necessary resources to deal with what was always going to be an upsurge in customer complaints and inquiries.
Indeed, people have reported spending hours on the telephone trying to reach a Centrelink operator. Those venturing to Centrelink shopfronts in hopes of clarifying their financial situation in person have been directed to go online instead, even though the MyGov website is unreliable. Not surprisingly, there have been allegations (by independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie among others) that Centrelink employees are having difficulty coping with upset and sometimes suicidal customers, and "that officers are discouraged from looking too closely at complex cases, and have been managed out of debt recovery if too many questions are asked".
The DHS denies that its management of the debt issue is untoward or that Centrelink staff are delivering anything other than the efficient and quality service that Australians expect. However, Mr Wilkie's allegations have a certain plausibility given the years of funding cuts that have seen service delivery levels cut right across the public service.
Funding cuts have also increased the bureaucracy's reliance on outside IT providers, some of whom have little appreciation of the intricacies or sensitivities of social service delivery, let alone in recovering debts from vulnerable welfare claimants. In retrospect, the Kafkaesque robo-debt recovery program looks like a case of IT overreach, and the government has been wise to recognise that. It needs to show similar understanding of Centrelink's inadequate resources.
