Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) Media Release
ACOSS is demanding an overhaul of the income support compliance system following shocking revelations that at least 10 people have died after being wrongfully cut off from vital payments.
“We have known for years that payment suspensions and cancellation have extremely harmful impacts on people, including homelessness, relationship breakdown and destitution,” said ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie.
“Revelations today that at least 10 people have died after having their income support payments wrongfully cut off are shocking, devastating and demand an immediate response from the Federal Government.
“The Targeted Compliance Framework that cuts off people’s payments must be urgently stopped and overhauled.”
In November it was revealed that around 1,000 income support payments may have been illegally cancelled in the period between April 2022 and July 2024.
A previous computer failure that wrongly cut people off from income support was reportedly discovered by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations in 2020 but no action was taken for more than three years.
Following an ACOSS complaint, the Commonwealth Ombudsman is now investigating serious issues with the Targeted Compliance Framework with a focus on whether income support cancellations are being made in a way that is lawful, reasonable and fair.
The system has been plagued by errors in recent years, including previous instances of confirmed illegal payment cancellations and large scale IT problems leading to confusion and distress for people affected.
Since its introduction in 2018, ACOSS has consistently opposed the Targeted Compliance Framework and formally warned successive Ministers about the serious harm it causes, urging the payment suspensions to be stopped.
“Every three months 240,000 people – over a third of people in Workforce Australia – have their payment suspended. The TCF must be urgently removed to prevent further harm to people on low incomes,” said Dr Goldie.
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I would be very surprised if ANYONE that has any ‘social welfare’ support from the Oz govt has not experienced significant problems (in addition to the notorious Robodebt) with the various agencies that administer, as supposed ‘experts’ in their field. It’s a complete and utter schemozzle of confusion and ineptitude, incl:
… misinterpretation and application of ‘Deeming Rules’,
… misreading of properly produced ‘Financial Statements’ (by competent tax accountants),
… during phone calls ad hoc and self-pitying comments about what the Govt ‘likes’ and ‘doesn’t like’ (regardless of the law),
… interminable delays (up to months) whilst the next tier of ‘experts’ are ‘drummed up’ to consult with,
… ombudsman’s terms of reference limiting their reviews / actions,
… actual unlawful bias in seeking to direct applicants to alternate ‘schemes’,
… and etc etc …..
all the while, with no or suspended support payments.
And as for Govt contracted Job-finding agencies …. nothing but a complete and utter rort. Manufactured incompetence and guile, tantamount to, or actual fraud.
And goodness only knows what the latest NDIS / State Govt double back-flip and reverse quango holds for those needing disability support. No wonder Shorten has scarpered.
Hey! But that’s nothing any little hapless yokel need worry about, UNLESS they put a foot or pen outa place, when they’ll be rendered to the bottom of the pile and govt sponsored confabulation to shrivel and maybe die, or become a criminal to survive.
The efficiency of the current system can be demonstrated with one little personal anecdote:
Every time I update my rental details, there are issues with having the submission of the form noticed and acknowledged by Centrelink. Once they do accept the new details, the automatic response is to send a letter telling me that either my whole pension or the rent assistance portion of it has been cancelled. Not adjusted, not paused while being considered for adjustment, cancelled. And then they continue payments at the adjusted rate – without further communication.
This is their way of telling “clients” that their payments are being adjusted due to a change in rent payments. How many people other than me freak out at the receipt of those letters and spend hours, either at an office or on the phone, trying to make sure that they haven’t actually been cast into the gutter?
It’s a relatively minor matter – just a badly worded letter – but it doesn’t help those who have, for whatever reason, difficulty in dealing with cumbersome bureaucracies.
It is increasingly clear that there are a lot of hidden automatic aspects to the Services Australia and Centrelink computer system. Robodebt was just one of them.
If the computer system decides that a person is cut off, in some instances human workers ar not able to over-ride it and instead do a work-around to fix it – if they want to.
As for cutting people off, it used to be a tactic used by Centrelink to weed out those who had fake accounts, or were doing the wrong thing. It was applied randomly. The thinking was that if a person who was working full time, single parents in a marriage like relationship, or claiming additional benefits under a false name, when cut off they would be less likely to front up to an office to complain. Of course this caused immense difficulties for people who were totally legit.