What a mess...who's responsible, and what will the ramifications be to them personally?

Let's put skin in the game here, everybody's skin!

To me, it's more evidence of the war against the poor.

Dan

Governments/government departments, are just no good at anything, simply because it is always other people's money they can afford to be careless with. Until individual public servants are held accountable for their inability - as they are in the private sector - and are required to 'make good' any stuff ups they make, out of their own pockets, nothing will change. We used to have good people in the public service; now we have mainly no hopers who can't get a job anywhere else.

ttbn,
By that logic, corporations would be just no good at anything, as their workers too are always dealing with other people's money (and contrary to your claims, generally don't have to male good the results of their stuffups out of their on pockets).

Anyway, this was the result of political, not bureaucratic, incompetence. The government ordered Centrelink to send out the debt notices without first verifying the debts.

Typical right wing group think! Chase pennies as billions are rorted via tax evasion and sharp practice!

This ballistic bureauocratic balls up, typical of their particular myopic focus!

Gotta chase single mums/cripples etc, for a few dollars as billionaires and multinationals rip annual billions from internal revenue with untroubled impunity.
Alan B.

I can't help thinking how much of Robo-Debt was actually sabotaged by those bureaucrats & public servants who wanted it to be a failure to assist their political ambitions whilst profiting from the losses they incurred for those for whom the system was designed to help !

I wonder how any rational thinking poster can possibly imagine just how you'd sabotage something that was illegal with conception?

All you'd need would be to blow the whistle!

Possibly as you watched annual billions being rorted from legal internal revenue?

As myopically focused idealogues chase pennies as a classic distraction that the gormless can transfer their rapt attention to?

One can only hope the targets of this financial injustice are driven to crime or ignoring social distancing in an effort to earn a buck, from dope pushing, shop lifting, enforced sexual slavery perhaps? Given the actual alternative financial options available for the targeted demographic! Zip, zero, ziltch?
Alan B.

as billionaires and multinationals rip annual billions from internal revenue with untroubled impunity.
Alan B,
Yes & don't forget the bureaucrats who deny assistance to those in need & don't question applications from drug abusers & those who view work as something other people should do !

Individual

Robo-Debt was brought in too early. What was needed was the ATO and Centre Link to be a combined system.

Of course, it isn't.

As of 2017 statistics there were approx. 1.2M people receiving welfare payments paid to people - over and above the National population of Australia - 25M!

So 1.2M extra Welfare payments being paid under "how many identities" - taxpayer monies being paid via "fraud".

It is now 2020 - so how many more 100 thousands do we add to the 2017 figure.

The issue is not only a Liberal issue it's an issue that has not been addressed by either Governments.....whilst we, as taxpayers, still are being defrauded by those who wilfully believe - they can get as much money as they like.

Australian taxpayers deserve much more scrutiny by all forms of Government, to ensure Welfare payments are provided to those in need, and not the "frauds" who continue to wrought the system.

ensure Welfare payments are provided to those in need, and not the "frauds" who continue to wrought the system.
SAINTS,
Of course & an equally fraudulent system is the salaries structure of bureaucracy ! If we insist on sorting out welfare wrought then we must also insist on sorting out salaries wrought !
Politicians & senior Public Servants are not performing adequately for their salaries ?
They're not value for our money ! Even at half their present salaries they'd still be under-performing !

Individual

So totally agree.

Saints,
you may have noticed that I used your term 'wrought' which I assume you meant to be 'rort" !

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ROBO-DEBT?
-the Social Security Act allowing Centrelink to class an 'overpayment' as a debt.
-the averaging system
-investigations by Centrelink officers no longer occurring before ‘please explain letters’ were sent.
-a discrepancy (i.e. between Centrelink and ATO records) being determined by a computer, not a person.
-a machine-generated letter being sent: if not addressed within 21 days, becoming evidence of overpayment.
-discrepancies occurring innocently (e.g. employer clerical error / income distortion via income ‘averaging’.
-a 20% ‘error rate’ in the identification of discrepancies.
-discrepancy notices being sent to previous addresses, to a dead person’s parent and the like.
-the computer giving private debt collectors the job of recovering such artificial debts.

And all this driven by a section of our political class that in my view is best understood as vindictive, judgemental, sanctimonious, privileged and ‘entitled’.

Brendan O’Reilly is worried about the elephant in his room. I don’t know Brendan, and his concern may well be honestly expressed, yet I was confused by his focus on what I might term ‘real debts’. His article is ‘balanced’ and full of detail … he seems in control of his subject. And yet, his...

“My guess is that most of the $721 million about to repaid to welfare recipients probably represents genuine (albeit inadequately proven) overpayments”

...undercuts the hard research work involved and demonstrated in the bulk of his article. Unfortunately, in my view, this bells the cat: Perhaps Brendan is more concerned with the cheats than the deserving.

[see: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-03/centrelink-debt-controversy-what-is-robodebt/8317764 ]

Welfare!? Does anyone who is reduced to living on a government pension able to afford annual cruises/overseas holidays? Yes? And what about all the welfare for the rich? Negative gearing now exceeds the aged pension?

Most of the wealthy, can so arrange their financial affairs so a to reduce their share of the tax burden to 15% What's good for the goose?

With some small private enterprises adjusting their expense sheet so as to pay no tax at all.

In actual dollars, the most company tax paid by any Australian corporation for the year ending 2017 was just 13%! with some paying in actual cash transferred, 4%!

And a reported 40% paying none at all!

The latter among the largest multinational corporations?

Yet we have this absurdity of folk without enough to actually live on!

Being asked to repay debt most never ever owed!

Before we start to attack the lest well off for money never owed? Why don't just end the age of entitlement and end, negative gearing, fully franked tax returns to folk not paying any tax! And subsiding the super entitlements of the wealthy?

And use those savings to build a pool of public housing that the poorest can afford And get the building industry out of the valley of death they're currently in!

Invest our money in a reliable, dispatchable, carbon free, power system, that even the poorest third world country could afford!

And allow the following economic benefits and increased discretionary spend to turbocharge our economy and manufacturing sector, so no able bodied need suffer these totally unnecessary indignities!

Outlaw all commission systems of payment along with paper shuffling, profit demanding middlemen, whose totally unproductive activities, double the cost of living and or, doing business!

Just reserve our welfare, for the unemployable, single parents, deserted mums, the crippled and the intellectually challenged!

After all, it's what it's there for, is it not?
Alan B.

Public housing is a rort of the highest order, & should be eliminated immediately. It is a hang over from the days of feudalism, where the serf was provided housing & a little food in exchange for their labour.

Similar was continued during the industrial revolution where factories or town councils provided housing to attract labour. It has no place in todays society where no return labour is required for welfare.

Today with so many streams of welfare, many "underprivileged" are much better off that the workers who are paying for this rip off.

Welfare should be a one shot payment, & the same for all on welfare. Today we have single parent, unemployment, disability carer & a host of other benefits, followed by payment for each child, free medical, free child care, cheap housing, all coming from different budgets, with the total for many, way above any possible earning they could achieve. Fat chance of ever getting them, to ever go to work

Welfare should be enough to live on, but only just, to encourage more to want to earn more. In total, with all streams from all sources added up, it should never exceed the minimum wage.

If the state wants to own housing it should be rented out for a small profit, not added as yet another burden for whose working for their living, & providing their own accommodation.

Garry in Liffey

You talk about cheats and the deserving. The fact is that if welfare cheats were made accountable, a greater share of the welfare pie would be available for those persons on welfare (the vast majority), who are honest in their declarations.

My concern about the "$721 million about to repaid to welfare recipients" is that the facts strongly suggest that most of this money may go back to actual cheats that were not entitled to the full amounts that were actually paid to them. This goes back to the need for the authorities to adequately prove each fortnightly debt to the satisfaction of the courts.

The fact is that if welfare cheats were made accountable, a greater share of the welfare pie would be available for those persons on welfare (the vast majority), who are honest in their declarations.
Bren,
If only we could get a handful of conservative thinking Public Servants into these jobs, welfare would be way more fair than it is presently !

I have paid the robotic "debt" of a relative who had no money themselves to pay that significant sum. They never truly owed anything, but were unable to prove it.

The reason for issuing that "debt" was that until the end of 2012 they were eligible for and received "child-support" payments (which I do not approve of) while working part-time, but as that eligibility was stopped by legislation in 2013, they were forced to move to a full-time job, thus earned much more during the second half of that tax-year, at which time they stopped receiving welfare payments altogether.

The tax-based averaging method ignored what happened, as well as the fact that they already repaid about half of the welfare-payments received during that tax-year in extra income-tax (which could not be refunded due to the length of time passed).

I have told my relative that I do not want this money back, because I consider it sinful to be in receipt of money from government, whatever be the reason. I therefore asked them as a precaution to withdraw their bank-account details from all government departments so they cannot be refunded electronically, and should they instead receive a refund-cheque in the mail, I asked them to tear it up and throw it in the recycling bin.

At least it is good to learn from the article that we will not be re-harassed with new demands, or will we, once we tear up the cheque but they claim that we received it, thus having to pay 3 times a sum we never owed?

I plead with everyone here who might also be involved:
MAINTAIN YOUR DIGNITY AND SELF-RESPECT: NEVER ACCEPT A REFUND FROM THE GOVERNMENT'S DIRTY HANDS!

"Besides undeclared income, other areas of Centrelink fraud include failure to disclose a partner, and often exaggerated claims of incapacity."

How does having a partner reduce the cost of living?
If you share a bedroom, it will save you in rent.
If you cook meals together it may be marginally cheaper than cooking or buying meals for yourself if you're single, however the food itself isn't discounted.
If you share vehicles there may be a benefit.
But there's no savings to be had anywhere else.

The amount the government penalises a person for being in a relationship does not equate to savings in the cost of living.

Government Robodebt?
Same as anything else 'Incompetence'
- That we have to pay for.

You want the truth?
Governments are largely incompetent.
Show me something they did right.
There's no process to check for flaws in policies and foolproof them.
Until this happens, we should all embrace 'incompetence'.
The best thing we can do is learn to love 'incompetence' because things aren't likely to change anytime soon.

I'm waiting with bated breath for the class action to start and ministers of the crown standing in the dock giving sworn, who knew what and when and whose decisions were the actuators/who is responsible?

I suspect a lot of brown stuff will hit the fan between now and then

As for public housing being the greatest ripoff?

As someone who built some, take extreme umbrage at that remark and the extreme ignorance and possible vested interest as a price-gouging, jack up the rents, landlord, that may have produced that garbage response?

Yes Hasbeen, I get that around 100,000 new public houses in new estates, would force rents lower as will our closed borders! And the real reason for your, shock and horror, disingenuous outburst.

I prefer to think of public housing as a win/win for the taxpayer who is left with an income-producing investment and a very large and valuable asset! A source of ongoing reliable employment for the entire gamut of the building trades for at least half a decade.

And produce a numerous range of manufactured building products that keeps many manufacturers and their staff, gainfully employed and paying tax! And massively supporting the domestic economy with their improved discretionary spending power!

Nothing like a lot of visible work all over the joint along with excellent half-term profit graphs! To inspire confidence and increase private investment in almost anything other than traditional bricks and mortar

And no bad thing!
Alan B

I prefer to think of public housing as a win/win for the taxpayer
Alan B,
A win for the taxpayer would be if top bureaucrats' taxes were used alas, it's merely a handful of the blue collar taxpayer's relations who might get a tiny slice of that huge cake that mainly pretend refugees get to enjoy & the bureaucrats still get to enjoy huge benefits for very little effort !
Until such time that we get a Govt with real gonads that stipulates a Flat Tax, nothing will significantly change !

Individual

You state "you may have noticed that I used your term 'wrought' which I assume you meant to be 'rort" !"

My response - And that's your "only" contribution to this article?