Exclusive: Complaints lodged with commissioner over potential breaches of privacy under Centrelink scheme

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner is examining complaints that people’s private information has been handed improperly to debt collectors under the botched robodebt scheme.

Guardian Australia has confirmed complaints have been lodged with the OAIC by a number of people about potential breaches of their privacy.

The complaints about potential privacy breaches follow the Morrison government’s decision to settle a landmark challenge against robodebt. The commonwealth conceded a $2,500 debt raised against Deanna Amato was not lawful because it relied on income averaging.

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Before it settled the Amato case, the Morrison government abandoned its sole reliance on income averaging to calculate debts, in the process dismantling a central plank of the robodebt program’s automation which has seen tens of thousands of welfare recipients overcharged for alleged debts.

A range of experts have been sounding the alarm for some time about the legality of the scheme. Welfare groups, legal centres, Senate inquiries and a former administrative appeals tribunal senior member, Terry Carney, have all warned that income averaging is not a proper basis to claim a debt. The same argument is being pursued in a class action by Gordon Legal challenging the legality of the entire program.

It is unclear how much of the $660m raised by the robodebt program will have to be repaid, but the government services minister, Stuart Robert, has played down the significance of court findings, arguing only a “small cohort” of robodebts are affected.

Joel Townsend, the program manager of economic and social rights at Victoria Legal Aid, said there was a potential interaction between the recent Amato test case and privacy law.

“Victoria Legal Aid clients have called us distressed, upset and overwhelmed after being repeatedly contacted by debt collectors chasing a robodebt,” Townsend said. “This is unacceptable.”

Townsend said Centrelink needed to halt the program. “Following the federal court outcome in our client Deanna Amato’s test case, we now know that robodebts calculated using only ATO averaging are unlawful.”

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“Any robodebts which Centrelink has forwarded to external debt collectors should be recalled immediately.”

Townsend said it would be “deeply concerning if Centrelink has continued to refer robodebts based on averaged ATO data to debt collectors after being advised of the unlawfulness of averaging in the Amato case”.

“The potential for privacy breaches in referring unlawful robodebts to debt collectors is yet another reason why the department needs to act quickly to stop all recovery actions and set aside unlawful robodebts calculated solely using averaged ATO data.”

The shadow minister for government services, Bill Shorten, told Guardian Australia there needed to be an inquiry into whether one of robodebt’s “many vices includes the abuse by government of the private information of its citizens”.

Shorten said Labor supported debt recovery when there was proper human oversight, but “what is different with robodebt is that the government in Ms Amato’s case finally admitted it had no lawful basis for pursuing many of those debts – that legally money was not owed”.

“The next obvious question is: did innocent individuals have their personal information given to private debt-collecting corporations and others for no good reason at all?”