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Centrelink may have to junk 100,000 debts: ombudsman
Centrelink should consider forgiving all 100,000 debts that may have been affected by unlawful income apportionment, the commonwealth ombudsman has said in its second and final report into the controversy.
The ombudsman found that Services Australia and the department of social services “did not act promptly” to address the issue and it “expected more action to have been taken” given the agencies had known about the problem for three years.
In August the ombudsman found that from at least 2003 to December 2020 the agencies miscalculated debts due to an “incorrect” understanding of social security law.
The problem has resulted in dozens of criminal prosecutions first being paused then dropped. In October Guardian Australia revealed that recovery on 86,000 alleged debts – of the total 100,000 possibly affected – had been paused.
Centrelink may have to forgive all 100,000 debts, the ombudsman says. Photograph: Darren England/AAP
In its report on Monday, the commonwealth ombudsman said the agencies were “still unable to advise how many people were affected or how much payment rates are affected – that is, how much payments went up or down because of unlawful calculations”.
The ombudsman said Services Australia and DSS “have a responsibility to identify and assess, in a timely way, the impact historic unlawful calculations had on customers, and develop a fair and reasonable remediation strategy that considers all possible options”.
Given the scale of income apportionment and the length of time involved [they] should also be considering as one of those options whether the most appropriate as well as fairest way forward to remediate the impacts on customers with unlawful debts might be an approach involving large-scale waiver of debts … rather than seeking to re-calculate over 100,000 individual debts.
It recommended this be combined with “clear communications to customers” so that those who had “repaid unlawful debts” could seek review or other remedies. Excluding people who had repaid debts or were underpaid would “not be fair”, it warned.
11m ago18.48 ESTSeventeen-year-old Will Shackel posts video asking Macron about nuclear energy in Australia
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Article from www.theguardian.com
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