Unionised Centrelink staff have written an open letter to welfare recipients saying they share their pain about the “unfair, unjust and callous” automated debt recovery system.

The letter was released by the Community and Public Sector Union on Wednesday, as the Department of Human Services issued its own statement lambasting the media for saying the system has a 20% error rate.

The union says its members will be handing out the letter on behalf of staff at a small number of Centrelink offices around the country. “We know that the automated debt notices are unfair, unjust and callous,” the letter says. “We acknowledge that, in a great many cases, they are not your debts.

“Many of us warned the Department of Human Services that the debt system wouldn’t work. Despite our combined hundreds of years’ experience in welfare systems, the department is still not listening.”

The department’s statement, titled “Let’s talk about facts”, said repeated claims that Centrelink’s automated system has a 20% failure rate were wrong and misleading.

The automated system relies on a process of data matching between Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office to detect discrepancies in reported income. When a discrepancy is detected, a letter is automatically sent demanding an explanation from the individual.

The 20% figure relates to the number of cases in which the discrepancy detected by the system does not turn out to be a debt.

The department’s general manager, Hank Jongen, said it was wrong to describe that as an error rate.

“In 20% of cases, people update their details and it results in them not owing money,” he said. “That doesn’t mean the letter was sent in error. It just means we’ve received up-to-date information and the matter is now resolved.”

He again reiterated that the initial letter was not a debt letter.

If the initial letter is not received or replied to within 21 days, however, the debt is imposed, although the human services minister, Alan Tudge, has signalled that this will change.

There have been repeated cases where individuals do not receive the initial letter because it has been sent to an old address, are unable to find evidence of their income from up to six years ago, or cannot use Centrelink’s overloaded phone system or online portal to dispute the debt.



The union letter describes Centrelink as being in crisis and highlights the impact of thousands of job cuts and a lack of training and permanent staff.

“Debt notices are only the beginning – Centrelink is in crisis and the only way to fix it is for the Turnbull government to make it possible for us to help you,” the letter says.