For many people, the promise of a new year sets a precedent and encourages new intentionality. All those reminders of hardship clear the way for more prosperous experiences. But at the start of last year, those sentiments were dashed for me and many other former welfare recipients, some receiving debt letters up to tens of thousands of dollars.

Centrelink to use 1,000 labour-hire staff to help recover welfare debts Read more

What I and many others experienced, and will probably continue to experience this year, was being targeted by Centrelink’s “robo-debt” system. Calculations are no longer done by workers, who can check mistakes and inconsistencies. Now the debt calculator is completely automated and algorithmic.

Alan Tudge, who was then human services minister, said the debt mechanism was “working as intended”. Our minister revealed the personal details and records of Andie Fox to a journalist to defend the system. As everything blew up, the cogs and mechanics of Centrelink’s indisputable cruelty were revealed, the department did an about face. No longer happy with pandering, those at the helm revealed their disdain for the (underemployed) working poor.

That one letter can wreak such havoc on a life may seem disproportionate, but it merely tells half the story, a common experience of economic precariousness and its continued effects on psychological wellbeing. My letter came accompanied by an assurance that debt collectors would be on my tail within the week if it wasn’t cleared up in that time, and in response I spiralled into panic. The monetary instability is one thing – the threat of homelessness is another. Some victims were given six days to pay up, were threatened with having their wages garnished, their assets seized.

Originally in the thousands, my debt got cut down to a few hundred after my recalculations, and the rest is currently being contested thanks to advice I found online. Like me, a large number of recipients were sent inaccurate letters. And despite the initial furore, robo-debts are still being mailed to people who have stopped receiving Centrelink years ago. Only minute changes have been made to accommodate recipients.

I’m viscerally aware of how much financial stress destroys you over time. Tara García Mathewson wrote that “the constant stresses and dangers of poverty actually changes people’s brains.” It erodes your sense of freedom with which to enthusiastically respond to the world, and to clearly connect with others. With our faculties shutting down, all that remains is the worry, the fear, that next week you will not be able to pay your rent, your groceries, your bills. Like Mathewson says, there is a “growing body of research that suggests the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex.” You become inordinately confined, imprisoned in totally dead air. It is cognitively suffocating. Your nervousness and despair become your baseline.

Our institutions go hard after welfare cheats, but they privilege the rich | Erin Lennox Read more

Given no other option, I fought my way through those paralysing spells of doubt and shame. Other friends of mine who received robo-debts (who had financial security) offered their own testimony, saying it was time consuming and frightening enough to comprehend and address for them even given their favourable circumstances. I know that there is a family to fall back to, although I’d have to move across the country to access that safety net and uproot my whole life as I’ve known it. But I know, at least, that this option exists, albeit being an unfavourable one. For that I feel a small gratitude. Many don’t have that option, especially queer and trans friends and peers who are severed from this fallback due to filial ostracisation.



As time goes by and our government refuses to let up on this consistently impractical and vicious automation system, I see the same pain being enacted on close friends, confidants, acquaintances; some more capable to handle it than others. For me it was Twitter that provided a refuge. Asher Wolf is one such user who became a veritable library of knowledge and clarity with which to cut through the confusion; a main figure of the #notmydebt appeals. And dealing with Centrelink is overwhelmingly confusing – it often feels like their system is set up to ward off prospective applicants, their online services convoluted and almost totally inaccessible. Wolf wrote:

Responsible governance requires governments to be held accountable for their actions. “I’m sorry, computer says no,” should never have been more than a sick, sad comedy skit. But Centrelink and the Turnbull government has made “computer says no” a life-threatening reality for goddamn countless people.”

At any given time I am expected to know three or four usernames and passwords in order to effectively run Centrelink, to use the mygov mother site, and to access the iPhone app – not to mention the processes and codes you need to meet with Centrelink employees in person. Information provided is often vague, non-specific and hypothetical. Letters are sent infrequently and often only accessible deep in the most convoluted pocket of the mygov website. Many don’t receive notifications if there are new letters. The first that many heard of their debt was when debt collectors came knocking.

Despite Twitter often being an inescapable, punishing and neurotic hellscape, it transformed into a community where confused users could receive resources, shared written experiences and hold communion with one another online instead of resorting to self-harm or more risky ways of making money. As each new robo-debt update came through, so did a flurry of tweets from lawyers, privacy activists and campaigners, who all put in good time dispelling myths and shameful, stigmatising sentiments. The online movement for a more sensible take on welfare was spurred by the robo-debt phenomenon.

Centrelink scandal: tens of thousands of welfare debts wiped or reduced Read more

It goes to show how social media can be used as a reasonable tool for connection as opposed to one that isolates and drains. In private Facebook groups I discovered the campaigns being won by Pas Forgione, the coordinator at Anti-Poverty Network SA. Partly urged on by the scale of the robo-debt debacle, Pas has won the approval of at least 10 councils around Adelaide in his ambition to increase the weekly benefit of Newstart, which has not changed for 20 years, despite rapidly fluctuating and growing costs of living and market prices.

The ethic of the Centrelink process seems to be to drive down the vulnerable, to leave us limp and unattached to support - but we’ve always had the capacity to regroup.

• Jonno Revanche is a writer and the editor of Vaein Zine