Category Archives: courier mail

Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon backs Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union

Renee Viellaris, The Courier-Mail

Subscriber only

A SOPHISTICATED “bludgers’ club” that coaches dole ­recipients how to fight being pushed into paid work is being financially backed by Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon.

Senator Rhiannon has told The Courier-Mail she wants the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union (AUWU) membership to increase, raising questions why a parliamentarian would want more jobless Australians to rebel against their mutual obligations to taxpayers.

The union, which is not registered and does not have charity status, has 6500 members across the country, hosts a ­detailed website and a “national advocacy phone” to advise welfare recipients of their “rights” when it comes to Work for the Dole and job searching.

Articulate union president Owen Bennett advocates for the working week to be reduced to 35 hours, increasing Centrelink benefits to $517 a week and the abolition of the Work for the Dole program.

Firebrand Senator Barry O’Sullivan yesterday slammed Senator Rhiannon for bank­rolling the “bludgers’ club”, saying that she should be ashamed of herself for offending “fair-thinking Australians who want to support the genuinely unemployed”.

Senator Lee Rhiannon.

He accused Senator Rhiannon of backing the group in a bid to attract more voters to the Greens.

But Senator Rhiannon said the group provided support and believed it should attract more members.

“I donated $300 to the AUWU as I support the ­important work they do,’’ Senator Rhiannon said. “Considering the high levels of mismanagement by job agencies, and the exploitation of workers when they do find a job, I hope this union gains more members and more support.”

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said that the organisation had a perverse purpose.

“Mr Bennett would better serve the unemployed if he ran an organisation that aimed to get people off welfare and into work,” she said.

Mr Bennett denied the organisation distracted the jobless from looking for paid work. The website sets out what mutual obligations are fair, how to hit back at job agencies when they do not contact penalised jobseekers who fail to turn up for compulsory activities and rails against the physical danger of Work for the Dole.

Editorial: Admit Centrelink system is broken and then fix it

January 5, 2017 10:00pm
The Editor
The Government needs to actually admit there are real problems with the new system to catch fraud and overpayments and suspend it.
The Government needs to actually admit there are real problems with the new system to catch fraud and overpayments and suspend it.

WHEN a government agency tasked with assisting some of the most vulnerable Australians is reduced to suggesting on Twitter that clients seek help via Lifeline, perhaps it is time to acknowledge there might be a problem.

In recent weeks Centrelink has been deluged with thousands of angry and frightened social security recipients who received letters informing them they need to repay, in some cases, thousands dollars in alleged overpayments.

This, according to Human Services Minister Alan Tudge, is all about “strengthening the integrity of the welfare system by cracking down on fraud and overpayments”.

That premise is something no reasonable Australian would disagree with. Quite simply, anyone caught rorting the system should be forced to repay money owing, and possibly face additional penalties depending on the scale of any deliberate fraud.

The problem is that there is mounting evidence that thousands of innocent Australians are being informed they are liable for debts that don’t exist due to issues with Centrelink’s now automated compliance system. One key issue relates to a data matching system Centrelink is now using to marry its information with that held by the Australian Taxation Office and other agencies.

In some cases this system is incorrectly concluding a person was working two jobs when they had only declared one, perhaps due to a minor paperwork discrepancy. In others, where a person may have been unemployed for a period and receiving Newstart, the system is then averaging wages earned over the remainder of the year over the whole 12 months – including the period when no or little work was undertaken.

The compliance exercise is sending out tens of thousands of letters a month, and according to Human Services general manager Hank Jongen, has so far found $300 million in overpayments.

While the majority of these assessments may ultimately prove correct, there is still an alarming number of cases where the system appears to have failed completely. For people caught in this position, the situation is made worse by the onus of proof being reversed in terms of demonstrating that they don’t have a liability, as opposed to Centrelink proving that they do.

Clients are also reporting chronic problems with Centrelink’s website and difficulty accessing staff by telephone, all of which can add up to considerable stress and anxiety for people who, in many cases, may be guilty of nothing more than a clerical error or a victim of a Centrelink software oversight.

The whole mess is reminiscent of Queensland Health’s automated payroll debacle a few years ago, a shemozzle that ended up costing about $1.2 billion to fix.

While the affair has been referred to the Commonwealth Ombudsman for investigation, this process will take time.

In the interim the Government needs to actually admit there are real problems with the new system, and suspend it until it can guarantee what are serious flaws have been rectified.