Recipients of the welfare payment will need to have a referee sign a legal form confirming they meet the eligibility criteria

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A plan to force the friends and family of single parents to sign legally-binding Centrelink forms vouching for their relationship status has been labelled “intrusive, offensive and demeaning”.

In a little more than two months, recipients of the single-parent payment and a similar Newstart payment will need to have a “referee” sign a legal form verifying that the welfare recipient is, in fact, single.

The referee will need to sign a legally-binding form, which carries a 12-month prison sentence for providing false information.

Existing recipients will need to provide Centrelink with the forms from January, and new recipients will be subjected to the change from September.

The government predicts that payments will be reduced or penalties imposed for 7,400 people. The budget estimated the measure would save $93.7m over five years.

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The Australian Council of Social Services (Acoss) is pushing back against the change, which forms part of a broader welfare overhaul announced in the budget.

The Acoss chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, said the vast majority of those affected were women, who were being singled out as “unreliable and untrustworthy”.

“It’s intrusive, offensive and demeaning,” Goldie said.



“It is a policy which says single parents uniquely can’t be trusted to tell the truth to government agencies. What about business people claiming business expenses? What about property owners claiming tax deductions? Will they need to get a third party to vouch for their claims?”

But the social services minister, Christian Porter, said the measure was designed to stop the small number of people lying to Centrelink to get higher payments.

Porter said about 4% of the 370,000 people on the single parent payment or Newstart payments for single parents were thought to be receiving too much.

“The rationale for this is very simple; people should only be receiving the payment to which they are entitled. It can hardly be characterised as demeaning to ensure people receive the payment they are entitled to,” he said.

“Requiring a third party to verify the relationship status of an applicant for these payments by signing a new form – with serious penalties for providing false information, which include up to 12 months in prison, will serve as a strong deterrent,” he said.

Under current social security law, a single parent is someone not in a de facto relationship, a marriage, or a registered relationship, such as a civil union.

Welfare recipients have an obligation to tell Centrelink within 14 days if their relationship status changes.



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When determining whether someone is single or part of a couple, Centrelink takes into account the financial and social aspects of the relationship, the nature of the household, whether the relationship is sexual, and the “nature of your commitment to each other”.

Goldie said the new verification process represented a further intrusion in the lives of parents.



“Single parents are already at high risk of poverty, with almost 40% of children in single-parent households living below the relative poverty line,” she said.



“Instead of designing more ways to undermine and demean single parents, the government should be working closely with single parents and their representatives to ask what can be done to support them better, including support to secure decent employment, suitable for balancing their caring responsibilities.



“This is about blame, shame and punishment. It has to stop.”

Centrelink has special provisions for recipients who believe a decision that they are part of a couple has caused financial hardship.