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.