Move comes as Bill Shorten demands automated system be dumped after ‘a summer from hell for thousands of people’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The ombudsman has launched a broad, self-initiated investigation into the Centrelink automated debt recovery scandal, as the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, demanded the automated system be suspended.

“This farce has to end,” Shorten told Fairfax Media. “This stuff-up has delivered a summer from hell for thousands of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Both the independent, Andrew Wilkie, and Senator Nick Xenophon had referred the debt recovery system to the commonwealth ombudsman’s office before Christmas, amid mounting complaints that it was sending incorrect debt notices on a large scale.

But the deputy ombudsman, Richard Glenn, told Guardian Australia on Monday the office had decided to launch an investigation of its own accord, describing it as an “issue of significant interest to this office”.

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“I can certainly say the ombudsman has approved an own-motion investigation into the matter,” Glenn said.

“That is self-initiated, this one will be self-initiated because we have a number of complaints and there is significant public controversy about the issue. So it is an inquiry into the issue at large, rather than into a specific complaint,” he said.

“Certainly there’s enough information from complaints we’ve received and … it’s an issue of significant interest to this office, and we’ll be pursuing it.”

The ombudsman’s investigation will focus on problems with the automated data-matching process being used to compare Centrelink and tax office records, the quality of Centrelink’s communication with its customers and the management of the subsequent process.

“It’s a big program, it’s a big item to have a look at. We don’t really have a handle on how long it’s going to take to do it,” Glenn said. “Really we need to get our heads around how the technology works, and what the responses are to the technology.

“It’s going to take some resources to do the job, we have some available, we’re certainly able to pull resources from across the agency to do it, so it shouldn’t be a major impact on us.”



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Glenn said the decision to remove human oversight of the data-matching process would be “certainly one of the issues we will look at”.

“Clearly there have been some differences in the program compared to the way it’s worked in the past, both in volume and the way the technology works.



“It’s quite clear that there’s an issue surrounding how the program works because of the sort of the complaints that we’re seeing.”

He said the Department of Human Services had so far been cooperative and accommodating to the ombudsman’s office.

The ombudsman’s powers are limited. It can make only recommendations, and is not able to compel change. But Glenn said the office could report publicly.

Wilkie welcomed the decision, saying it would be of some comfort to many of the individuals affected.

He described it as a “victory for common sense and appropriate oversight of government policy”.

“My office continues to receive a large number of complaints from the community from people who are being wrongly accused of owing Centrelink money or at least finding it near on impossible to substantiate their income going back as far as 2010,” Wilkie said.



“The scale of this problem is beyond doubt, not least because Centrelink itself has admitted knowingly sending out as many as 4,000 incorrect debt notices a week.”

victory for common sense and appropriate oversight of government policy.



The system could also face the scrutiny of the auditor general, following a referral from Labor, and the information and privacy commissioner, who has been in contact with the department.