One of the former contractors who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Mike*, said "the instructions were to do everything possible to accelerate the process in debt raising and satisfy the targets that were being set." The former workers say the system was designed to "publicly shame" employees of the compliance team into collecting as much money as possible, which encouraged a culture of bending the rules. DHS' 'whiteboard of shame' shows compliance officers were ranked. Shadow Government Services Minister Bill Shorten described the image as the "whiteboard of shame the Morrison government does not want you to see," and repeated calls for the scheme to be scrapped. The Department of Human Services denies targets were being set. The compliance team's job was to talk with Centrelink customers to check their personal circumstances and ensure they were entitled to the benefits they were getting.

If the compliance officer could not contact a customer on two occasions, that triggered their ability to match tax office records with income estimates provided to Centrelink, and if it showed a debt, they could send a letter notifying them of the debt, "finalising" the process. The data matching method is called "averaging out", but staff claim it can result in debt notices being sent incorrectly. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Two of the former compliance officers both reported there were people cutting corners to reach set targets. Some compliance officers would let a customer's phone ring just once or twice and then hang-up, one said, helping the officer hit their target. "There was a lot of corners cut to make sure you hit your finalisation targets for the day mostly that was around contacting customer to request payslips," former compliance officer Jessica* claimed.

Loading Another contractor, Sally*, said the targets were set "reasonably quickly" after their training finished. Jessica alleges she was told "we had to complete three debts a day, finalising them. That increased the longer I stayed there, they were expecting about five a day." The whistleblowers also claim each morning there would be a review of the previous day and good results were met with a cheer. All three said failure to meet targets were met with job threats. "If you weren't meeting your targets you were put on performance review for four weeks, and then escorted out of the building if you didn't meet your finalisation requirements," Jessica said.

"They could easily dismiss you within one hours' notice, being a contractor," Mike said. DHS denied that targets were being set and said it has improved access to support for debt reviews. "Our compliance staff are not required to finalise a prescribed number of reviews for any period. Quality customer experience is an important part of our approach and we have a quality framework designed to ensure our approach is followed," DHS general manager Hank Jongen said. The Minister for Government Services, Stuart Robert, did not directly answer the allegations, instead pointing to his public defence of the system in the past. *Names have been changed