Sector says looming cuts will cause ‘huge dent’ in ability to help vulnerable people affected by debt recovery scheme, which accounts for 20% of total work

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Looming cuts to community legal centres will undermine their ability to support vulnerable individuals targeted by Centrelink’s “robo-debt” system, the sector has warned.

Community legal centres, which provide legal advice to low-income or otherwise disadvantaged groups, are facing cuts of 30% to federal funding from July.

Those cuts will cause the loss of lawyers and the closure of centres, unless the federal government reverses its decision in the May budget, or state governments step up to fill the gap, as New South Wales did this week.

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One community legal centre that devotes much of its resources to Centrelink debts, Social Security Rights Victoria, is warning the cuts will cause a “huge dent” in its ability to help welfare debtors.

In January, providing advice or support for Centrelink debts accounted for 50% of the centre’s workload. It is now accounting for roughly 20% of total work.

A principal lawyer, Graham Wells, said the centre had helped individuals with mental health issues, cognitive impairment and disability who simply had no capacity to understand the reasons for their debt.

Wells said the funding cuts would leave extremely vulnerable individuals on their own to deal with the complexities of the Centrelink system.

“There’s a huge dent, and we can’t afford to pick up the difference, because we just don’t have those funds,” Wells told Guardian Australia.

“The reality for our centres … is that staff won’t have the time and won’t have the capacity to do what we’ve been doing,” he said. “There’s an assumption there that people will need to be able to help themselves, but many of those affected by the robo-debts, they don’t have the ability to help themselves.”

A Melbourne academic, Lauren Bliss, was targeted for a $3,900 welfare debt late last year, which has since been reduced to about $480.

Even Bliss, who is well-educated and engaged, turned to Social Security Rights Victoria for help navigating the system and understanding her rights.

Bliss said she cannot fathom how difficult it would be for others without such support.

“It would be a total nightmare, especially because Centrelink, the way I was treated on the phone in contesting the debt – the debt was manually reassessed three times, it got down to $980, then $880, and then around $400,” she said.

“It was a lot of work, and I had to do a lot of that myself. “I spent hours and hours and hours on the phone. It’s incredibly stressful to be told you owe a debt to the government, it affects people very deeply.”

The attorney general, George Brandis, has repeatedly said his government invests significantly in the community legal sector, despite resource constraints, and has injected $45m of new money to frontline services through its $200m family violence package.

That new money will not go to Social Security Rights Victoria or similar bodies supporting welfare recipients.

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The centre is calling for the federal minister, Alan Tudge, and Centrelink policy officers to work with it to make the system fair and equitable.

It comes as the social services minister, Christian Porter, finds himself under scrutiny for his role in the Centrelink saga over Christmas. Porter, tasked with defending the system in Tudge’s absence, responded to criticism by saying it was working “incredibly well”.

The ABC has reported that a freedom of information request shows Porter’s office did not directly receive any written documents or analysis from either Centrelink or the Department of Social Services, which has policy development responsibility for debt recovery, before making that statement.

Porter’s spokeswoman said the minister had received verbal briefings on the system during the Christmas/new year period. Any documents on the system would have come indirectly from Tudge’s office or to Porter’s advisers, the spokeswoman said.

“During that period the minister received advice from DHS and minister Tudge’s office in relation to a number of specific media queries, as well as queries the minister himself directed to DHS on the Centrelink online compliance operation,” a spokeswoman for Porter said.

“The minister received direct verbal briefings from DHS on the Centrelink matter during the time he acted for minister Tudge.

“Where he had recourse for supporting documents, those went to the minister indirectly through the human services minister’s office or through minister Porter’s advisers.”