Category Archives: Centrelink

Brain tumour patient had Centrelink payments suspended while in hospital recovering from surgery

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Australian Council of Social Service says ‘unconscionable’ case shows why mutual obligations system must be ‘replaced with a fair system’ for jobseekers

A jobseeker is calling for an overhaul to the way suspensions are handled after his Centrelink payments were suspended while he was in hospital recovering from brain surgery.

The Albanese government is mulling an overhaul of the employment services system following a damning parliamentary review that criticised the mutual obligations system, which can suspend jobseekers’ welfare payments if they do not fulfil tasks such as attending meetings and submitting job applications.

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Job agencies suspending Centrelink payments at an alarming rate, data reveals

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Exclusive: Smaller Workforce Australia providers, including those catering to Indigenous jobseekers, have effectively suspended more than 90% of their caseloads

Some of Australia’s outsourced employment service providers have effectively suspended the Centrelink payments of more than 90% of the jobseekers on their books, new data reveals.

Jobseekers have their payments suspended as part of the mutual obligations regime, which is meant to ensure jobseekers are actively looking and preparing for work. If they do not fulfil activities such as job applications, training courses, interviews and meetings with job providers, their Centrelink payments are suspended.

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Jobseeker endured 11 weeks without Centrelink payments but was still forced to attend job agency appointments

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Advocates say government failing to meet ‘basic obligation’ to process claims quickly after Tim McCabe spent weeks with ‘no income’

A New South Wales jobseeker says he was forced to complete welfare mutual obligations – including a 50km round trip for job agency appointments and enrolling in training courses – despite receiving no welfare payments for 11 weeks.

Tim McCabe, 60, said he had applied for the jobseeker payment on 1 November after moving off a carer’s payment when his mother died.

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Data shows ‘collapse’ in full-time roles – as it happened

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Pat Conroy says Ukraine-requested helicopters are not cleared for flight

The defence industry minister, Pat Conroy, is speaking to ABC RN about a request from Ukraine to receive Australia’s retired fleet of MRH-90 Taipan helicopters. The helicopters were retired earlier than planned after a crash in Queensland killed four Defence personnel during a training exercise last year:

Anyone who suggests that these aircraft have been cleared is wrong and they are making, quite frankly, really offensive suggestions at a time when people are really grieving.

I think it’s really important that those investigations keep working to establish the cause of that accident. These aircraft are [not in] flying condition, and we still do not know whether they’re safe to fly.

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Centrelink staff claim toilet breaks are being timed by management in ‘intrusive’ crackdown

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Call centre workers say systems are monitoring their performance minute-by-minute in bid to improve wait times

Centrelink call centre staff claim they are being monitored minute-by-minute, including the length of their bathroom breaks, as part of a management-led crackdown to improve average call wait times that have blown out to nearly double in the last year.

Staff spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing their jobs, claiming management systems, which assist team leaders in capturing call time figures and monitoring staff activities, acted more like a surveillance system, describing them as “intrusive and stressful”.

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Major Australian employment service accused of claiming credit for work jobseeker found herself

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Exclusive: Documents seen by Guardian Australia suggest job provider APM referred woman for role she had already won; APM deny wrongdoing

One of the country’s biggest job providers has been accused of claiming it referred a jobseeker into work she got herself, which could trigger publicly funded incentive payments.

In July, a New South Wales woman, who asked for her name not to be used, found herself a job as a youth worker just as she was accessing jobseeker and matched with employment service provider, APM.

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‘You are deceased’: Services Australia bungle results in woman losing bank accounts and pension – twice

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A 74-year-old carer was mistakenly declared dead by Centrelink two times in a case advocates describe as illustrating the ‘devastating consequences of automation’

The Centrelink officer on the end of the phone to Eve* was telling her she was dead. Eve, 74, who receives a carer payment, had called after she noticed an extra $3,000 from Centrelink in her 81-year-old husband’s account in May this year, and she was concerned they had been overpaid.

After calling multiple times, she reached someone from Services Australia who looked up her account history.

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Two people remain in jail for welfare debts that Centrelink may have been calculated unlawfully

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The cases are probably wrongful convictions and prosecutors should facilitate appeals, a legal expert says

Two people are in jail after Centrelink used unlawful calculations to accuse them of overclaiming welfare benefits, a watchdog has revealed.

On Monday the ombudsman released its second report on the income apportionment method, calling on Services Australia to waive 100,000 debts that may have been incorrectly calculated and revealing the “traumatic” impact on those convicted of offences related to welfare debt.

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Centrelink to get 3,000 new staff in bid to deal with helpline and payment delays

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Funding boost of $228m aims to return workers to frontline roles after millions of calls went unanswered

Centrelink call centres will get an additional 3,000 staff as part of an immediate $228m funding boost to speed up claim payments after complaints of blown-out call wait times.

More than 800 workers have already been recruited, with the remaining 2,200 to be employed in centres across capital cities and regional New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, the government services minister, Bill Shorten, announced on Sunday night.

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Services Australia forced to pause Centrelink debt repayments for 86,000 people amid legality concerns

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Debt pause comes after watchdog found historical ‘income apportionment’ method breached social security law

Services Australia has been forced to pause Centrelink repayments for 86,000 people over concerns the welfare debts may be unlawful, while warning income support recipients it’s too early to say if those debts will be waived.

In August the commonwealth ombudsman revealed that up to 100,000 debts or potential debts were incorrectly calculated over two decades by “unlawfully apportioning” welfare recipients’ income.

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Services Australia backtracks after ‘unfair’ approach to botched child support assessments

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Commonwealth ombudsman says agency initially planned not to inform people affected by 15,803 potentially ‘inaccurate child support assessments’

Services Australia proposed not to contact past customers affected by 15,803 potentially “inaccurate child support assessments” but backtracked after the commonwealth ombudsman warned this could leave parents out of pocket.

In a statement on Monday the ombudsman revealed that poor IT systems had resulted in errors in up to 47,488 assessments, but Services Australia had wanted to avoid notifying about a third of the caseload, a plan the ombudsman labelled “unfair”.

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Australia news live: grocery prices should ease, Gallagher says; eye-infection causing microbe found at NSW swimming spots

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Comments follow Coles and Woolworths announcing annual profits of more than $1bn even after a spike in cost-of-living pressures on households. Follow today’s live news updates

A Gold Coast city councillor has been charged with murder, AAP reports.

A 58-year-old man was found deceased inside an Arundel property by emergency services, after police were called to the residence around 3pm yesterday.

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Hours on hold, repeated calls, months of delay: Maryanne’s struggle to get urgent jobseeker payments

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Even as a former staff member, Maryanne Watts was shocked at how long it took to get urgent assistance. Experts says she is not alone

When Maryanne Watts applied for jobseeker earlier this year, she knew it wouldn’t be a smooth process. She had been a Centrelink worker in the 1990s and had received income support in recent years.

But even she was shocked at how difficult it was to get her application processed – even when she was about to run out of money.

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Australian jobseekers told to use ChatGPT to apply for jobs and shown irrelevant videos

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Exclusive: A taxpayer-funded online employability course that included videos on body language contained ‘not curriculum-endorsed materials’

A taxpayer-funded employability course is under fire after jobseekers complained that much of the compulsory training involved being shown irrelevant, inappropriate and, at-times, bizarre YouTube videos.

Under contracts signed by the Coalition last year, the federal government will pay private providers about $300m over five years to run Employability Skills Training (EST) courses as part of the commonwealth’s $7bn Workforce Australia program.

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Australians who lost welfare under 1990s student loan scheme have cause for class action, expert says

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Andrew Grech says action could be pursued if implications of SFSS loans were misrepresented to people when they signed up

Recipients of a dumped welfare scheme that enticed low-income students to trade away their right to welfare have cause to mount a class action, a senior legal expert says.

The Australian government is still chasing $2bn of debt from more than 140,000 former students who signed up to the student financial supplement scheme (SFSS).

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Welfare advocates welcome Centrelink rule change to help domestic violence victims

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Officers will have to consider whether domestic violence is a factor when determining if welfare recipient is part of a couple

Australian welfare rights advocates have welcomed changes aimed at preventing family violence victim-survivors from being punished under Centrelink rules.

Under social security rules, people must declare to Centrelink whether they are single or in a relationship. Those deemed to be in a “couple” receive a lower rate of income support than singles.

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Coalition’s $50 jobseeker rise more generous than Labor’s proposal, Pocock says

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Albanese government risks being unfavourably compared to the Morrison government if it does not raise the payment for all, the key independent says

The Morrison government’s post-Covid decision to lift jobseeker payments by $50 a fortnight helped more people than the Albanese government’s mooted 55-plus budget proposal, the key crossbench senator David Pocock says.

With less than a week to go until the budget is handed down, advocates and MPs are becoming increasingly concerned the Albanese government’s second budget will not do enough to help those living below the poverty line, or help women re-enter the workforce.

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Labor MPs condemn ‘discriminatory’ plan to increase jobseeker only for those over 55 in budget

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Concerns growing that any changes to rental assistance will also fall along generational divides

Labor MPs who have advocated for an increase in the jobseeker base rate were mostly unimpressed by the prospect of their government limiting the raise to those aged over 55 in the upcoming federal budget.

Concerns are also growing that any changes to commonwealth rental assistance will also fall along generational divides and be lower than what is needed to meet the rising cost of housing, with a 25% increase firming as the likely figure, when advocates had called for 50%.

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Majority of Australians on jobseeker and parenting payments live in poverty, study finds

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Report on 3 million people living below the breadline shows welfare payments are ‘totally inadequate’ and action is needed in May budget, Acoss says

The majority of people on the jobseeker and parenting payments are living in poverty while about a third of single parents are also below the breadline, according to a new study.

A report from the University of New South Wales and the Australian Council of Social Service, to be released on Wednesday, provides further insight into the demographics of 3 million people, including 761,000 children, previously identified as living in poverty in the 2019-20 financial year.

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Australia’s welfare system puts disadvantaged at risk, inquiry told

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Mutual obligation system subjects some participants to ‘punitive conditions’, commonwealth ombudsman says

Australia’s mutual obligation system for welfare risks “subjecting disadvantaged participants to unreasonably onerous and punitive conditions”, the commonwealth ombudsman has warned.

The ombudsman made the submission to a Senate inquiry, which has already recommended a major overhaul of the controversial ParentsNext program, and revealed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants were fined at almost double their rate of participation.

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