Category Archives: Centrelink debt recovery

Services Australia chasing billions in unpaid debt – including some which may have been unlawfully calculated

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Agency pursuing $4.9bn in unpaid debts, including some potentially calculated with controversial method, question to parliament reveals

Services Australia is chasing billions of dollars in decades-old debt, it has been revealed, some of which may have been incorrectly calculated.

Data released under questions on notice shows that, as at the end of October last year, Services Australia was pursuing $4.9bn in unpaid debts from 829,266 customers. The oldest debt dates back to 1979, with thousands from the 1990s.

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Gallagher warns of robodebt repeat if public service is cut, but denies ‘scare-mongering’

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Finance, women’s and public services minister says Coalition’s promised cuts means ‘failures of systems’

Katy Gallagher has denied running a scare campaign against the Liberals on the possibility the public service would be gutted if the opposition was elected next year, while warning she has “no doubts” the slash-and-burn would lead to another robodebt-style saga.

Several Coalition frontbenchers have ramped up their attacks on federal bureaucracy in recent months, accusing the Albanese government of mismanaging the budget by hiring more than 30,000 people to undertake key service delivery jobs, including in Centrelink and the NDIS.

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Victoria to cut more than 130 bushfire forest service jobs – As it happened

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This blog is now closed

Young man dies in multi-vehicle crash in Queensland’s Bundaberg Region

A fatal multi-vehicle traffic crash last night at Elliot in Queensland’s Bundaberg Region last night is being investigated by the police forensic crash Unit.

All travel has been appropriately declared and is a matter of public record.

The only people that need to look at the rules are [shadow transport minister] Bridget McKenzie and Peter Dutton. They’ve got some serious explaining to do.

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‘Bias’ finding over robodebt investigation undermines faith in anti-corruption watchdog, legal expert says

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Review into integrity body especially concerning as it relates to ‘the person at the top’, Geoffrey Watson SC says

The federal anti-corruption watchdog’s conflict of interest is “really concerning” because it relates to “the person at the top”, Geoffrey Watson SC, a former counsel assisting to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, has said.

On Wednesday, the inspector of the National Anti-Corruption Commission released a excoriating review of the Nacc’s decision not to investigate robodebt corruption referrals, finding it to be “affected by apprehended bias”.

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‘Zero repercussions’: victims of robodebt ‘embarrassed’ to have believed justice would be done

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Despite a royal commission and now findings of misconduct, those affected say many of those responsible have been able to ‘just walk away’

Victims of the unlawful robodebt program say they feel “embarrassed” to have believed justice would be delivered following a royal commission into the scheme, suggesting “they could put all this into a Monty Python movie”.

Twelve officials, including former department heads Kathryn Campbell and Renée Leon, breached the public service code of conduct 97 times during their involvement in robodebt, an Australian Public Service Commission taskforce found on Friday.

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Shorten furious over robodebt department head’s attempt to position herself as ‘scapegoat’

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Kathryn Campbell defends her role in unlawful scheme and rejects claim she came up with program with former prime minister Scott Morrison

Bill Shorten has launched an excoriating attack of former public servant Kathryn Campbell after she claimed she was unfairly blamed in the robodebt scandal and defended her decisions around the scheme.

“Robodebt was a shocking betrayal and failure of empathy towards vulnerable people who needed support from the government,” Shorten said on Saturday.

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Inquiry into robodebt issues sanctions against four of 12 staff: why so few and what happens next

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Australian Public Service Commission’s report finds 12 of 16 public servants breached code of conduct 97 times but only remaining staff to be reprimanded

The outcome of a highly anticipated 13-month inquiry into the conduct of current and former bureaucrats involved in the illegal robodebt scheme has been released.

The Australian Public Service Commission’s report marks the formal end of the agency’s investigation into what public servants responsible for devising and running the scheme knew and how they acted.

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IT expert wins long-running freedom of information court battle over robodebt documents

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Justin Warren first lodged request with the then Department of Human Services in January 2017

The federal court has ruled against a decision blocking access to early robodebt documents drafted under the former Coalition government, as part of one man’s long-running fight to shed light on the scheme’s origins.

Justices Geoffrey Kennett, Anna Katzmann and Shaun McElwaine ruled that a December 2022 decision made by the administrative appeals tribunal (AAT) to keep some robodebt documents exempt, including draft costings and new policy proposals, should be set aside due to procedural unfairness and because the AAT had incorrectly agreed with the cabinet confidentiality exemptions Services Australia applied.

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Robodebt was illegal but were its officials corrupt? This decision means now we won’t know

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The National Anti-Corruption Commission won’t investigate six individuals referred by the royal commission. It’s yet another blow for victims

An email landed in my inbox not long after the National Anti-Corruption Commission announced its refusal to investigate the robodebt scandal.

It was from Michael Griffin, a robodebt victim. Griffin, like countless others, descended into a spiral of shock and shame after he was wrongly told to repay a $3,197 welfare debt in late 2016.

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Robodebt: national corruption watchdog won’t investigate officials referred by royal commission

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Nacc says it decided not to launch corruption probe ‘as it would not add value in the public interest’

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (Nacc) won’t pursue an investigation into six individuals referred by the robodebt royal commission, due to separate public service investigations being carried out into five of them.

The Nacc said on Thursday that it was “unlikely it would obtain significant new evidence” and had concluded it was “undesirable for a number of reasons to conduct multiple investigations into the same matter”.

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Australia weather live updates: more heavy rain forecast for NSW and Qld as SES issues flood warnings; Sydney downpours cause train delays and airport flight cancellations

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Dozens of flights cancelled at Sydney airport and drivers told to avoid non-essential travel as inland low and coastal trough combine

Helen Reid from the Bureau of Meteorology has just provided us with an update on the Sydney rain and said the city could very well receive a month’s worth of rain in one day.

She pointed to the Observatory Hill gauge and said on average in April, there is around 126.5mm of rainfall during the month. Since 9am yesterday morning, there has been 106mm of rain.

We are expecting rainfall over Sydney to increase during today … I would suggest that if we got more than the April average, that wouldn’t be too beyond too far beyond this stretch of imagination.

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Top Australian debt collector still operating in Victoria despite blacklisting

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Exclusive: Consumer Affairs Victoria investigating Panthera, which was fined $500,000 in 2020 after pursuing debts from people who were not liable

One of Australia’s largest debt collection companies is continuing to operate in Victoria despite being blacklisted in the state over its unlawful pursuit of false debts, undue harassment and misleading conduct.

Panthera Finance and its subsidiaries are major players in the Australian debt collection and acquisition sector, and were paid millions by the former government to help collect welfare debts for Services Australia.

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Australia news live: only 54.3% of Virgin flights and 66.3% of Qantas flights on time last month, transport minister says

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‘Very disappointing results, it is no wonder that so many Australians remain fed up with our major airlines,’ Catherine King says. Follow today’s news updates live

‘Very, very clear’ renewables are the cheapest form of energy, Bowen says

Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, including its storage and transmission costs, the energy minister told ABC RN.

Its conclusions this year are unimpeachable and very, very clear.

The cheapest form of energy is renewable energy, even including the costs that go with renewable energy around storage and transmission.

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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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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 apologises to staff over ‘unfair toll’ of robodebt

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Agency’s chief executive says Centrelink staff acted in ‘good faith’, following damning royal commission findings

Services Australia staff have received an apology from management over the robodebt scandal, with the agency’s chief executive saying that workers who enforced the scheme had suffered an “unfair toll”.

In a video message sent to staff on Friday afternoon, the Services Australia chief executive, Rebecca Skinner, praised staff who had spoken up about the unlawful income averaging scheme – which was the subject of a damning royal commission this year.

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Robodebt: 16 bureaucrats named in royal commission report face investigation by public service agency

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Independent reviewer to decide if the former and current staff have breached the public service code of conduct

The government’s central public service agency has revealed it will investigate 16 referrals relating to former and current bureaucrats named in the robodebt royal commission report.

In an update on Thursday afternoon, the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) – which has established a taskforce to deal with code of conduct referrals – said it had written to the individuals to notify them.

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Scott Morrison a ‘bottomless well of self-pity’ with no ‘mercy’ for robodebt’s real victims, Bill Shorten says

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Minister for government services says ‘real victims are all those Australians who lost trust in government’ due to scheme

Bill Shorten has accused Scott Morrison of being “a bottomless well of self-pity” with “not a drop of mercy for all of the real victims of robodebt”.

That outburst in question time followed the former prime minister’s defence of his involvement of the scheme in parliament on Monday, claiming Labor was pursuing a campaign of “political lynching” against him.

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Senior public servants criticised by robodebt royal commission scrubbed from organisational charts

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Lawyer Annette Musolino is on leave, as PM’s department assistant secretary Russell De Burgh is replaced on staff listing

Two public servants adversely named by the robodebt royal commission have been quietly scrubbed from organisational charts, including the former top lawyer at Services Australia who had spent months assisting the commission.

Annette Musolino, who was general counsel at the Department of Human Services (DHS) at the time of the unlawful debt recovery program and later chief operating officer of the department, renamed Services Australia, is on leave.

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Australia news live: ANZ says customers ‘by and large are faring extremely well’ despite interest rates squeeze

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Follow the day’s news live

A student on New South Wales’s Central Coast has died after contracting the influenza virus, just days after NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant warned circulation of influenza B was rising and young people were at heightened risk from the strain.

You can read the full story here:

Having a budget which is in much better nick means that if at some future point – and we’re not contemplating additional measures right now – but at some future point if we need to, we do that from a much more solid foundation. And that’s because we’re managing the budget so responsibly.

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