comment, editorial

Welfare recipients are easy targets for governments who want to appear responsible with public money. The Coalition government has never been afraid to play the champion of lifters going after leaners cheating the system. Its efforts to recover money wrongly paid to Centrelink clients has been one in a long line of projects started in the name of "budget repair". A new chapter in this campaign has begun with new Human Services Minister Michael Keenan announcing it would chase nearly $1 billion in unpaid debts, including some established through its "robo-debt" system, by threatening to charge interest to thousands of former Centrelink clients unless they enter repayment plans. Keeping Australia's relatively generous welfare system sustainable, and safeguarding its integrity, is no cause to scoff at. Even the least conservative of political players should admit it's in the interests of all welfare recipients that the correct payments are delivered to the right people. The system deserves protection, because it pulls the nation back from the harsher versions of free market thinking embodied overseas. Efforts to claw back welfare debt become suspect when it grows obvious the government itself is responsible for many of the system's failures, but is looking elsewhere to lay blame. Coalition ministers tell the public they are strengthening Australia's welfare system by recovering overpayments, but don't acknowledge their government's own role undermining its success. The Department of Human Services overseeing Centrelink reports an error rate of about 2 per cent in administering payments. There are other, less flattering figures to report, not least that more than 55 million calls to the welfare agency met engaged tones last year. Human Services, regardless of any criticism it's copped, says "robo-debt" has been a success. Outside the government, one expert has said the online compliance intervention program has no legal basis to raise debts when a client fails to "disprove" they owe money. The Commonwealth Ombudsman found Centrelink's demands on former welfare recipients were neither "reasonable" nor "fair". When Centrelink makes mistakes, the real and potential impact on vulnerable people is such that the public may wonder at the gusto with which its minister announces the government will pursue "cheats". The government should temper these announcements with some contrition and humility, considering the Administrative Appeals Tribunal has inside the past year found Centrelink should not chase $45,000 in overpayments it made in error to one woman, and in another case, lashed the agency for misleading a client told she owed $37,000 in debts. Only someone very far removed from financial discomfort could fail to imagine the anguish these situations cause. Administrative errors undermine confidence in the government's handling of the welfare system. Worse is the way the government pursues the people it wrongly pays, a misgiving embodied by the "robo-debt" controversy, and something that has damaged Centrelink's reputation among so much of the public. The bitterness that many harbour towards the agency, surely amplified in recent years, does as much to undermine the welfare system as an overpayment or a fraudulent claim. Human Services, like all government departments, is under pressure to make savings and help bring the budget into surplus. This might help explain the way it pursues debts. The government should remember that many of the system's failures are of its own making, and that clients are not the public scapegoat it likes to pretend.

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