The release of the Paradise Papers showed that very rich people don’t like parting with their money – even if it’s for a good cause like keeping their country running. No one is surprised that they are siphoning money to offshore tax havens, yet many blithely accept governments targeting welfare and social services as if it’s those at the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder who are sucking us all dry.

There is a terrible irony here. We all put up with deliberately convoluted and difficult-to-navigate institutions in the hope that it will protect the coffers from welfare cheats and dole bludgers while, in practice, this obfuscation systematically privileges people with means.

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Like most people, I view Centrelink and other government institutions as faceless machines of bureaucracy which, as ordinary citizens, we are powerless to change. So I try to follow the rules. When I had my first child and stopped earning an income, I used the ATO’s online tool to check if I still had to lodge tax returns. It said I didn’t. But last month, I linked my MyGov account to the ATO and it told me those tax returns were overdue. I filled them out. It turns out that late tax returns render my family ineligible for the single income family benefit. Which is why Centrelink sent my husband a letter saying we owed them $600. Nice loophole, guys. You got us.

There’s an argument to be made that it’s up to us to know the rules and follow them. Complaining about not getting a handout could be criticized as evidence of an undue sense of entitlement. Not so for politicians who find it too difficult to navigate the bureaucracy surrounding citizenship and eligibility for parliament. When they are found to be ineligible, no one asks them to give back their massive paychecks.

I’m going to put it out there and say that I’m not an idiot. But I find it almost impossible to navigate these systems confidently. Filling out forms from government departments is bewildering guess work. And talking to someone involves ridiculous waits on the phone knowing I’m unlikely to have my problem resolved by the person who answers, because they have no more power to change the rules than I do. My family won’t starve but this stuff also happens to people who are genuinely struggling.

It’s not just Centrelink and the ATO. Last year I stood in the Medicare office and cried to a customer service officer after months of trying to recoup some of the fees I had paid to my psychologist. The Medicare app was buggy – sometimes claims just didn’t go through. In my sleep-deprived postnatal fog, I lost track of what had been claimed and my receipts started piling up. I called a number to lodge my claims over the phone. I waited for 45 minutes until the call cut me off at 6pm. I waited 45 minutes the next day and was told I still had to mail in my receipts. They did, however, take some details over the phone so that I didn’t have to mail a separate form. A while later they mailed me back half of the receipts asking me to fill in the form. Two days later, they sent the other half of the receipts asking me to fill out a different form. At some point, I also got a letter telling me that our family had reached the Medicare safety net. Despite an automated system that picks this up and notifies me, I still had to fill out another form to claim those benefits. I lost the form. That’s when I went into the Medicare office.

From the moment I walked in to the place, I felt like an untrustworthy citizen. There were signs telling me to alert a staff member should I need to access a toilet. There were signs warning me not to be aggressive. I waited for 45 minutes in there too.

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Our systems make us jump over hurdles to discourage people from claiming benefits they don’t need. For the privileged, benefits like tax breaks, subsidies and Medicare rebates don’t represent utility bills or food on the table – it’s just more money in the investment account. But then, the hurdles must look so small to them that they may as well step over them and pluck out whatever they can – or, to be more accurate, their accountants are doing it for them.

We hear a lot about welfare cheats who apparently rort the system – we hear nothing about all of the people who never make it to the point of claiming the benefits they are entitled to because they can’t make it over the hurdles that are deliberately placed in front of them. Nor about those who never even realise what they are entitled to in the first place.

And that, right there, is the big difference between the haves and the have-nots. It’s not a difference in work ethic or a difference in their sense of entitlement to benefits, subsidies or tax breaks. The difference is that one group can afford to pay people to fill out their forms, do their tax returns and hang on to every last dollar. So tell me. Who’s rorting the system?