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Social service and support organisations have argued that the government has failed in its duty of care of welfare recipients during its recent Centrelink debt recovery program. A Senate inquiry in Hobart on Wednesday on the issue heard that the onus of proof should have rested with the Human Services Department and that welfare recipients were largely dehumanised through having to challenge and pay back supposed debts. Social groups said Tasmania had been disproportionately affected by the program due to the state’s high level of welfare dependency. The panel heard Tasmanian case studies including one where a widow had been stung with a debt notification of $24,000 that her and her family were still challenging. In another case, a young man with a mild disability had been served with a $81,000 notice that was eventually reduced to zero. TasCOSS chief executive Kym Goodes said there was a clear power imbalance between the Human Services Department and the individual citizen throughout the whole affair. “Many of the people I have spoken to were overwhelmed by the enormity of what they were being required to prove and were crushed by that power imbalance,” Ms Goodes said. “What the Australian Government has done to Tasmanians in the last six months is almost incomprehensible. “An erosion of trust. An erosion of human rights. An erosion of dignity. An erosion of the principles of good government decision-making. “In TasCOSS’s opinion, the government breached its duty of care to protect Tasmanians.” Dun and Bradstreet was contracted by the government to chase debts once Centrelink received no response from debt notices sent to recipients after six weeks. The collection agency’s chief executive, Simon Bligh, said an officer’s debt retrieval process was guided by a person’s perceived emotional and financial vulnerability. He said even though they were under no obligation from the government to have debts paid in-full, it was in their own commercial interests to do so. Mr Bligh said he understood the firm still kept their commission even if a debt was later found to be invalid. He said that the firm had been referred about 25,000 debt collection cases but all of these had since been recalled unless a case had a payment process already underway. Council of the Aging Tasmania chief executive Sue Leitch said she had big concerns about how older Tasmanians would cope if the system progressed to the next stage of data-matching income from share dividends and other investments.

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