The human services minister, Alan Tudge, says he is unaware of any Centrelink recipient who is “completely convinced” they have been given a debt notice they do not owe.

Tudge spoke on the Centrelink debacle for the first time since his return from summer holidays on Wednesday morning, saying he was committed to maintaining the government’s controversial automated debt-recovery system.

He told ABC’s radio national that he did not believe the process was flawed, despite a flood of complaints to media outlets, unions, politicians, lawyers and support agencies of vulnerable Australians struggling to deal with inaccurate welfare debts, sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars.

“I’m not aware of individuals who are completely convinced that they don’t owe money but have been given a debt notice,” Tudge said.

“I have read all of the media reporting of this but as I said, people are given the opportunity to update their records when a discrepancy is found to be present,” he said.

The comments are likely to rankle the many welfare recipients who have shown that they have been given inaccurate notices of welfare debts, only to have them dramatically reduced when challenged.

They are also likely to anger welfare recipients who have reported not receiving Centrelink’s initial letter due to a change of address, struggling to find years-old payslips, reach the agency through its overloaded phone system, or navigate its confusing online service portal to dispute the debt.

Tudge expressed surprise at reports that some people were having to call Centrelink up to 350 times before getting through.



“I’m very surprised by that figure. I know that the call wait time for Centrelink can be long, the average call wait time at present is about 12 minutes,” he said.

“People can also go to a Centrelink office and typically they’ll be able to see a person, in person, within 10 minutes.”



His comments are at odds with the reports of welfare recipients, who are told to go online or use the agency’s phone service when they attend a physical office.

It also belies the significant problems faced by users of Centrelink’s phone system, which in 2013-14, blocked 13.7m of 56.8m calls and saw 30% of users hang up before reaching call staff, according to the Australian National Audit Office.

Tudge also said he had been taken out of context when he threatened to jail welfare recipients in December, saying he was referring only to those who committed deliberate welfare fraud.



He repeated the claim that the government had “recovered” $300m since introducing its new compliance system, again seemingly at odds with the department of human services general manager Hank Jongen’s statement that $300m in debts had been identified. Traditionally, there is a significant difference between the level of debt identified, or raised, and the level of debt recovered.

Last financial year, for example, $2.8bn was raised, but only $1.54bn was recovered.

Last week, the government’s former digital chief Paul Shetler described the Centrelink failure, and recent scandals involving the Australian taxation office and the census, as “cataclysmic”.

The government claims about 80% of the discrepancies identified by its automated system resulted in an individual paying money back, meaning 20% of cases were later shown to be wrong.

Shetler said that type of error rate would be unacceptable in any private industry, would constitute fraud, and would send companies broke.

Tudge rejected the criticism, saying Shetler had not worked on the Centrelink system.

He said claims of a 20% error rate were inaccurate.

“That’s a completely inaccurate description of that figure, what the figure is simply saying, is that when we have asked for that information, people have provided that information, and we have cleared up the matter for them,” Tudge said.

Tudge was asked whether it was fair that politicians accused of misusing taxpayer’s money were given second chances while welfare recipients were hounded and threatened with jail.

He said those accused of having welfare debts were given multiple chances.

“If you deliberately seek to get more money than you were entitled to, then yes, that is a fraud,” Tudge said.

“If, however, you have may have inadvertently put in incorrect income records, we’re actually giving you that opportunity now, because we’re reviewing them, we’re sending you a letter and saying there is a discrepancy.”

“We actually give you a first opportunity, we give you a second opportunity, we give you a third opportunity.”