Author Archives: AUWU

Dignity NOT Debt: RALLY to End Centrelink Debt Debacle Press Release

PRESS RELEASE

Dignity NOT Debt

RALLY to End Centrelink Debt Debacle

“Abolition of the Centrelink Debt Recovery Scheme” is the central demand of a rally being organised by the Australian Unemployed Workers Union on Tuesday 31 January, 12.30pm at the State Library in Melbourne.

President of the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, Owen Bennett, said that “The Turnbull Government’s automated debt recovery system has sent around one-quarter of a million debt notices to social security recipients. Up to 90% of these notices are are estimated to be incorrect.

“Centrelink staff have been instructed that they are not allowed to fix obvious errors in the debt notices, unless the recipient of the debt notice makes a formal complaint.

“Some people who are now working full-time have just paid back the debts even though they are incorrect because of the difficulties of getting through to Centrelink to make a formal complaint. Others feel intimidated or bullied into accepting the debt notices, even though they are incorrect.

“Up to 90% of the debt notices which have been reviewed randomly have been found to be incorrect. The consequences of these notices is horrific and could result in an increase in attempted suicides and people losing their housing because they can’t afford the rent or mortgage,”

“This system is a shameless continuation of the Coalition’s mission to criminalise social security recipients and dismantle the social security system as a whole. The Dignity Not Debt movement is committed to fighting Turnbull’s punitive approach every step of the way” said Bennett.

The ‘Dignity Not Debt: End Centrelink Debt Debacle’ rally has received broad endorsement, including from organisations like the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Fair Go for Pensioners, Council of Single Mothers and their Children and the Homeless Persons Union. The endorsement list indicates that the Centrelink debt notices are hitting a broad range of groups in the community.

Details of the rally are:

Tuesday 31 January, 12.30

State Library, corner Swanston St and La Trobe St, Melbourne CBD
The rally will then march to the Liberal Party headquarters in Exhibition Street.

Speakers will include: Greens leader Senator Richard Di Natale, Freedom from Poverty founder Duncan Storrar and NUS Education Officer Anneke Demanuele. Others include First Nations community leader Meriki Onus, Australian Unemployed Workers Union President Owen Bennett, Zach Brady from Centrelink Class Action and Sue Bolton from Socialist Alliance and Moreland councillor.

For Media comment:

Owen Bennett / contact@unemployedworkersunion.com

AUWU BLOG: GRAFT, GREED AND ‘BUDGET REPAIR’

The first of a series of AUWU articles on government graft and corruption as it relates to welfare and work in Australia

By Brenton Thomas, AUWU Member

While the government is defending its latest debacle in the name of budget repair its worth remembering the billions of dollars of graft that friends and families from both sides of politics have pocketed over the last twenty years courtesy of the government’s privatisation of employment services and education.

Graft is the adding on to the cost for something not needed. It is payment for unnecessary items. In the construction industry, it is paying for Soprano style labourers who sit around doing nothing. It is payment for ten tons of concrete on a job that only needs one. In the governments employment services industry it is paying from the public purse for companies that do nothing.

The rort is fairly simple and has changed little over a series of contracts over the years. When you become unemployed the government will require you to register with a private Job Services Agency that will be paid when you find work or enter training – regardless of whether they found the job for you or not.

They will use the lowest paid staff they can get away with who will diligently tick boxes, generate evidence of activity and invoice the government. It’s a simple license to print money that feeds off the normal background churn of people moving in and out of jobs.

The beneficiaries of this rort look like a who’s who of Australia’s elite. Sarina Russo the ‘Successful Business Woman’ that Sussan Ley was caught out visiting on the taxpayers dime. Teresa Rein wife of former Prime Minster Kevin Rudd and founder and managing director of the employment services and training company Ingeus. David Gonski author of the Gonski report also with Ingeus as chairman.

Not to be outdone by the A-list elites we can add in former public servants who presumably weren’t hired because of their knowledge of the private sector. Darren Hooper from US based Max Employment, formerly of the Department of Employment and the Department of the Prime Minister whose contacts with government awards Max employment the dubious honour of managing to get the Department of Employment to overlook significant allegations of fraud and be granted the lions’ share of the new deed.

Not content with money for nothing, the use of punitive employment policies together with VET-FEE Help take milking the public purse to levels of a fine art. The longer you are unemployed the more onerous the demands on you will become until you are in their offices every day of the week applying for Jobs that aren’t there on pain of losing your benefit if you don’t comply. You will be bullied, harassed and lied to systemically.

To escape punishment of course you can do a training course – which will be paid for by the VET-FEE budget and if your agency is affiliated with a training company they will now start earning big dollars.

This is against both the letter and the principal of the Law and Deed and occurs with full knowledge of the Department of Employment. You though are signed on with a private company and as such are outside the protection of both the Ombudsman’s Office and Administrative Affairs Tribunal. To seek remedy, you need to sue – but you are unemployed so can’t afford that and the government has cut the funding to the Community Legal services just in case you thought you had any rights at all.

Feeling powerless, disenfranchised, cheated, abused and sick and tired of greedy politicians and self-appointed elites? The first thing you can do is make noise. Take some lessons from the Greens and the Indigenous groups. Get involved. Join groups such as the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, various facebook groups. Every time someone in Canberra does anything you don’t like make sure a hundred other people hear you.

You have a legal right to complain. So lodge complaints. When they don’t respond to your complaint lodge a complaint about the lack of response to the complaint you just lodged. Make life as miserable for the bastards as they make yours.

Demand a full time independent Federal ICAC.

Above all the most powerful thing you can do is use your vote – with a twist.

If you are happy with the political system then vote for your local representative no matter what party they belong to. If you are dissatisfied, then vote against the sitting representative. Ignore the political party even if that means you vote against your traditional vote. The objective is to disrupt the process. To send a great big Trumpian middle finger in the direction of Canberra.

Out!
Out!
Out of the house!
Vote the Bastards Out!

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.

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.

AUWU Announces Centrelink Debt Officer

Are you having trouble with a Centrelink debt?

With Centrelink sending out 20,000 debt notices per week – some completely erroneously – it is important to get information about your rights before you respond to Centrelink.

The AUWU is now offering the services of our specialised Centrelink Debt Officer, who will be happy to give you advice, via email, about how to respond to your debt letter.

Please send the details of your debt to centrelinkdebtofficer@unemployedworkersunion.com and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Advice is open to members only. Membership is free and open to everyone. (Click the “Get Involved” button to become a member of the AUWU.)

Please remember, this is not legal advice and you should use your own discretion when deciding what to do about your debt.

Read more about how to fight back, and online campaigns here.

If you require legal advice, please contact your local welfare rights centre.

AUWU Blog – We want facts not fabrication, Mr Turnbull

by Valerie Farfalla, Vice president AUWU

‘Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.’
Aldous Huxley

Yet the Coalition government continues to ignore facts by fabricating stories about hundreds of thousands of dole bludgers skipping job interviews and failing to accept jobs. But where is the evidence? Facts are that in 2015, only 589 unemployed workers were financially penalised for refusing work. The tabloid press laps up the lies about ‘welfare cheats’ who are ‘rorting the system’and ‘becoming fat and lazy on the public purse’ – on $250 a week. This type of demonisation of unemployed workers has appeared in Australian tabloid newspapers around Christmas time for the past few years. Why? A slow news day? Or Government propaganda? To quote Huxley again: ‘The propagandists’ purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human’.

According to a recent article in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail, ‘every week, some 20,000 ‘compliance interventions’ are coming to light, a startling increase from 20,000 a year before the introduction of the new automated Centrelink debt collection system which links personal data to Australian Taxation Office data. The Government hopes to recoup $4 billion from the debt recovery program.

So let’s get this straight with some factual information.

Centrelink’s automated system is in gross disrepair, generating debt notices in error. Over Christmas the AUWU heard of dozens of complaints from welfare recipients sent debt notices from six years ago and asked to produce payslips to contest ‘online’ the alleged debt, which in one case was more than $10,000. Centrelink has no evidence or written record of the alleged debts but its Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transportation (WPIT) system has delivered a large batch of incorrect data matches with the ATO and the recipients are apparently guilty until proven innocent.
Some outraged politicians and welfare groups have called on Centrelink to suspend the compliance system.

I was in a Centrelink office this morning but there were few staff to attend the queues. ‘Sorry, just drop in your papers. There’s no Medicare officer or Financial officer today. We’re going on strike for two days starting tomorrow,’ we were told.

After Christmas, many families have lean pickings. Let’s hope they have enough food and rent money to last into January 2017.