The Commonwealth Ombudsman has lodged a supplementary submission with the Senate Committee inquiring into Centrelink’s Social Security debt compliance program which was based on automated data-matching with the Australian Taxation Office.
In his submission, the Ombudsman says the program continued to attract complaints from the public despite it being shelved almost a year ago.
The Ombudsman said that in November 2019, Services Australia (formerly the Department of Human Services) announced it would be making changes to the program.
“In particular, it stated that it would no longer raise debts for current or former social security recipients by using averaged income information received from the Australian Taxation Office,” the Ombudsman said.
“It further advised that it would make contact with individuals for whom Services Australia had used ‘only income averaging’ in its assessment and would provide advice to those individuals about ‘freezing’ repayment arrangements while it reassessed debts.”
The submission said the Ombudsman would continue to actively monitor relevant complaints and engage regularly with Services Australia to seek assurance that the process of identifying and remediating debts was fair and transparent.
He said this was because despite the changes announced by Services Australia, the Ombudsman’s Office had continued to receive complaints from individuals who had had debts raised under the program.
“Between November 2019 and August 2020 we received 302 complaints from individuals that were recorded as ‘automated data matching’ complaints,” the Ombudsman said.
He said that in the six months between Services Australia’s November 2019 announcement and the Government’s announcement in May 2020 that 470,000 debts would be refunded, Services Australia did not provide substantive communication about its actions to impacted individuals.
“We consider it is likely this has contributed to some of the uncertainty and confusion that individuals reported,” the Ombudsman said.
“Services Australia has now published updates on its website and commenced communication with impacted individuals. We welcome the steps Services Australia has now taken.”
The Ombudsman’s nine-page submission can be accessed at this PS News link.
