When Centrelink’s letter arrived two weeks before Christmas, Michael Griffin instinctively knew he was going to be unfairly trapped.
So he meticulously documented, step-by-step, how the system wrongly deemed him to have a $3,197 debt.
Griffin’s ordeal began when he received the standardised letter from Centrelink, telling him there was a discrepancy between income information held by the Australian taxation office, and what he had reported fortnightly while claiming the dole in 2013.
He was told to go online to his MyGov account to confirm his income details.
Griffin originally claimed benefits between February and May in 2013, receiving a total of $3,754 from Centrelink.
He reported working small amounts in three fortnights within those months.
In two fortnights, he worked 24 hours and earned $618 a fortnight, and in the third he worked 15 hours and earned $386.
Griffin has provided payslips to Guardian Australia that clearly show he reported this income accurately.
He boosted his working hours in the rest of his year, while not claiming welfare, and ended up with a total income of $26,642 for the 2013-14 financial year.
Centrelink’s online system asked him to confirm that he had earned $26,642, which Griffin did. This is where his problems began. Screenshots show how Centrelink’s system then averaged out his $26,000 yearly income across every fortnightly reporting period.
It wrongly assumed he had consistently earned $1,021 every fortnight across the year, including between February and May, instead of different amounts in different fortnightly reporting periods.
That wrong assumption made him ineligible to claim welfare for that period, and he was told he must repay almost all of the dole he claimed, a total of $3,197.
“I knew that this would happen when I went on the site, but there is no way for it not to happen – no way that I could pre-emptively explain to them,” Griffin said.
“Surely my situation is the default – how many people is this happening to?” he said.
Guardian Australia continues to receive dozens of similar complaints about Centrelink’s compliance system, which is automatically comparing income reported to the agency with information held by other areas of government, principally the Australian taxation office.
It then asks welfare recipients – at a rate of 20,000 a week – to prove they are entitled to claim benefits from up to six years ago.
A key complaint about the system is that it reverses the onus of proof onto Australia’s most vulnerable and poorest groups.
Victoria Legal Aid has noticed a significant jump in those coming to them for assistance on welfare debts since the system began in July.
But Legal Aid lawyer Joel Townsend fears most people are not even questioning their debts, and are failing to seek legal help.
“I think that one of the larger issues is the impact of automating this kind of debt collection process on the most disadvantaged people, people with mental health problems, young people, people without a good grasp of the English language,” he said.
“Those people are likely to be the people who are least able to handle a system that puts the onus on them to disprove a Centrelink debt.”
“Lots of people who should be seeking help with this legal issue are not doing so. And people who should be seeking reviews by Centrelink are not doing so.”
The government continues to maintain confidence in the system.
The Department of Human Services said it allows customers the chance to contest the discrepancy.
The vast majority of people, the department says, resolve the issue online and without the need for payslips or letters of employment.
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