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It seems we imagined Centrelink's robo-debt fiasco

Jack Waterford
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Four months on, it's clear that the Department of Human Services and Centrelink have learnt nothing from the robo-debt affair and remain in denial that there was anything fundamentally wrong with their approach at all. The furore, it seems, was the fault of stupid misunderstandings by some of its stupid clients, possibly willful misunderstanding by a media hungry for sensation, and opportunism by opposition politicians and welfare "advocates".

There were, it seems, never threatening letters of demand generated by computer comparisons of tax and Centrelink records – merely "invitations" from Centrelink to drop in for an electronic chat if there was the appearance of a discrepancy between the records. There was no error rate of 20 per cent or higher, because the "clearing-up of a discrepancy" ended the matter. As the department's secretary, Kathryn Campbell, put it: "This does not mean that the original letter was wrong, because the initial letter asked for clarification."

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'Robo-debt' collectors paid by commission

The Senate inquiry into the Centrelink 'robo-debt' collection scandal has heard the government contractor tasked with recovering funds worked by commission and had KPIs.

Another way of putting it, or of her putting it, was that the "facts" known to Centrelink "are not 'inaccuracies'; they are 'differences' in the information that is held ... I think it is quite important because the words 'inaccurate' and 'wrong' are wrong."

Asked whether the department was telling ministers that the scheme should proceed, she said: "The view of the department is that there are a number of refinements that need to be made – those refinements are being made – and that the system should continue."

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If the government has any intention of making the system more client-friendly, of changing its reversed onus of proof (whereby clients must establish their innocence of an accusation of overpayment), or of addressing its diabolical telephone system, the public is not in on the secret.

The acting Commonwealth Ombudsman, Richard Glenn, whose office's telephone system is almost as hopeless as Centrelink's, has made some extremely mild criticisms of Centrelink's processes, service delivery and communications. But he has pointedly avoided commenting either on the overall policies, the higher departmental planning processes involved or the department's novel approach to procedural fairness.

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His office was slow to get involved in the affair and wrote its (own-motion) terms of reference very narrowly. Its initial response was to urge people with problems to contact the department. Even if some media coverage suggested that the watchdog's report was critical, one would be awfully surprised if anyone in the department or Centrelink considered themselves more than accidentally nipped by an overenthusiastic puppy.

But the Ombudsman made one interesting point in passing. Once, when Centrelink was verifying information submitted by clients, it approached employers, using its coercive powers. It has now changed its procedures to require its clients to gather the information, and at their own time and expense. They must also, it seems, retain records for more than half a decade. A good deal of the "savings" from treating vulnerable citizens as machines comes from this transfer of cost and responsibility from department to client. It is only by focusing on the department's costs alone that this can be said to be efficient, reasonable or, in a situation where Centrelink makes all sorts of dubious orders and deductions about the data it receives, fair.

It's far from clear to me that other formal processes of administrative scrutiny are likely to amend a willful department's ways. I have, myself, made a number of freedom of information requests, even if the department seems no longer to regard itself as bound to acknowledge their receipt, to consult other than by shotgun threats to regard the request as too onerous, or even to sign interim or final decisions it purports to have made. One unsigned decision, now subject to appeal, involves a Trojan effort to imagine how searching every nook and cranny of the department could involve the wasting of hundreds of hours of departmental time. It would be a waste, too, if done in the way suggested. The response proceeds from the start with an earnest effort to find every possible reason why the request should be refused.

One might complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner but, alas, one hesitates to divert the commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, away from his as-yet-unfulfilled promise, made some time ago, to consider whether the department's belief that anyone who criticised its administration implicitly permits the department and the minister to breach privacy, so as to preserve the department's reputation and put the record straight.

Pilgrim seemed initially to raise his eyebrows at this interpretation of the law, but is obviously being measured and deliberate in his formal consideration of the proposition. As are the Australian Federal Police, invited by the Labor Party to consider whether the criminal law was breached. The AFP has always shown a strange incapacity to resolve any politically inconvenient suggestions of malfeasance by government officials, but, in this case, will no doubt find extra reasons for delay from the need to check their interpretation of privacy legislation with the Director of Public Prosecutions.

If bad policy and practice is unable to be identified or cured by the bureaucracy's checks and balances, by cabinet review of policy, or by timely interventions from the public's watchdogs, one might expect that courts and administrative tribunals will be invited to pass comment, if in cases carefully stage-managed by the department. The department has a policy of conceding cases it expects to lose or which will give it bad publicity; that way, they don't create precedents that could be used in future cases.

The Department of Human Services has more top-level officials than the Commonwealth needed to prosecute World War II.

We are thus in a situation where criticism and review of policy must depend on Senate committees, or in public forums. Social media is especially critical, particularly of senior officials. If the committee investigating Centrelink's debt-recovery practices is informed by the submissions and evidence, its report is bound to be utterly scathing, but it can be expected the government will ignore it as partisan. It would be hard, however, to suggest that even government senators manifest any enthusiasm for the policy, or the way the department conceived and managed it, or continues to defend it.

It's also interesting to note how many of the submissions, most of which are public, are from people who have identified themselves to the committee but ask that their names be kept confidential, because they expect that the department will retaliate if it could. This probably wouldn't happen – it would be in breach of the privileges of the Senate if it did – but that people are so fearful of the agencies involved (in many cases their own employer) speaks volumes of a poisonous workplace and distrust of management.

Campbell has strongly denied that any of the department's problems stem come from understaffing. It is probably wise, if she retains any ambitions, to say that, but, if she is right, there is something awfully wrong with the way things are run, in an agency with more top-level officials than the Commonwealth needed to prosecute World War II.

About this time last year, budget statements were being prepared promising extra savings of more than $1 billion from tougher scrutiny of welfare eligibility and relentless policing of suspected overpayments. On this score, the performance this year appears to have failed by hundreds of millions of dollars, but one can confidently expect that the budget, due in a few weeks, will proudly announce further savings, further crackdowns of scroungers, frauds and the immoral and unworthy, and, perhaps, further staff cuts at Centrelink based on its supposed greater efficiency.

Labor, especially newcomer Linda Burney, have been effectively exploiting public concern about the fiascos, but her party is essentially sniping only at the margins. The notion of using computers and data-matching based on Centrelink and tax records was Labor's own, even if it had intended to interpose more humans between the robots and the clients. And Labor in government, via still leading figures such as Jenny Macklin, Penny Wong and Bill Shorten, never saw anything much wrong with a relentless hunt for savings in social welfare.

The submissions record some of the frustration and anger of ordinary citizens about being treated with "arrogant disdain", "flawed and inaccurate" processes and "harsh, unjust and overly aggressive" attitudes. The whole process, one witness said, "reeks of utter contempt for those who are ... income-challenged. It also gives the appearance of a desperate cash grab by blitzkrieg-like (as in calculated to create psychological shock and disorganisation to the enemy) bullying, targeting those who are vulnerable and assumed unlikely to forcefully and persistently protest their innocence or debt inaccuracies". Submissions from non-government welfare bodies are, if anything, more critical.

Campbell, her department and Centrelink have yet to make any form of apology, other than to acknowledge they failed to anticipate "misinterpretation" of their correspondence, or the numbers of people who would not rush to "engage" with their dysfunctional and non-responsive machines and systems.

There has been no shift on her insistence on the dubious proposition that, if Centrelink's records of client income are wrong, then the assumption must be that it is the client's fault for providing inaccurate, misleading or false information. Perhaps it was true – she has not actually conceded this point to the Senate committee – that thousands of people were put to needless anxiety, and countless hours of waiting on Centrelink phone lines trying to "clarify" matters. But this was not Centrelink's fault because they had failed to properly engage with the system and "work through" the issues with Centrelink. Assuming, presumably, that they could find someone or something to engage with.

"We often find that people are distressed dealing with the social-security system," Campbell empathetically told senators. "Every morning I have a look at my email and there is a number of emails about people who are distressed in different circumstances. It may be their personal circumstances. It may be the interaction of our system with other systems. It may sometimes be a misunderstanding of eligibility under the criteria. We work with these individuals to try to resolve those issues."

No doubt she would dearly love to explain to the public, via the Senate inquiry into how Centrelink got into these misunderstandings, just how it is that the department, and its minister, is entitled to violate the privacy of Centrelink "clients" if they make public criticisms of the system, but, alas, the federal police have asked her not to comment on it while it goes through a long and drawn-out investigation into whether the department's appreciation of the laws about social-security privacy are correct. Apparently, a police investigation is to be treated as something akin to a sub-judice matter, if not in the manner of AFP public relations procedures when it claims to have uncovered drug smugglers or terrorists.

One does not have to read far through Campbell's evidence to realise Centrelink deserves a better class of welfare recipient.

"In many of these cases, we are discovering that people forgot to declare an employer; particularly when they had multiple employers, they forgot to indicate that they were an employer. They thought that they were going to be below the threshold so there was no point in declaring it. They thought they had declared it but then they realised they had not declared it, or they declared it in one year but not the other year.

"This is a complex system. It is really very difficult to navigate. It is difficult to navigate for the recipient and it is difficult to administer as well because of the nature of, for example, earned income for main payments such as Newstart and the like are evaluated on a fortnightly basis and they are also evaluated on an annual basis for family tax benefit.

"So sometimes recipients get confused in what they are declaring for family tax benefit purposes and income support purposes. So when we ask them to clarify, that is the opportunity in which to clarify it."

In these voyages, with this navigation, only citizens get thrown overboard.

Jack Waterford is a former Canberra Times editor. jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com

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