Centrelink debt ‘fiasco’ must be halted

Disabled People’s Organisations Australia (DPO Australia) has called for the Centrelink debt recovery process to be immediately halted, amid concern about the impact on people with disability.

“We are concerned that the current debt recovery process, that uses automated data matching, is particularly unfair for people with disability,” said Matthew Bowden, Co-CEO, People with Disability Australia, and spokesperson for DPO Australia.

It has been reported that Centrelink has  begun to use data from the Australian Tax Office to check records about people’s income, without staff involvement or oversight. People have reportedly received debt notifications, sometimes going back six years and have had a limited time to respond.

“Many people with disability rely on social security payments to make ends meet. For those that work in casual or contract work, this new system appears to be particularly problematic,” said Bowden.

“The majority of people with disability being reviewed will have been entitled to social security payments and have done nothing wrong.  Cutting social security payments to recover debts in this way could leave people with disability substantially worse off, and we already know that almost half of all people with disability live in poverty.

“Springing this kind of change on people just before Christmas, with no additional resources to assist them, is unacceptable.”

DPO Australia has called for the Federal Government to immediately suspend this automated debt recovery system and start to sort out the mess that has been created.

“Advocacy support needs to be significantly ramped up to make sure people with disability are not disadvantaged by poorly planned and implemented changes like this in government policy,” said Bowden.