Centrelink orders $32m in payments from over 11,000 JobKeeper recipients, but billionaire businesses owners can keep their cut.
Centrelink’s Compliance Program allows it to review welfare recipients’ tax records, to ensure that customers did not provide false information or withhold information.
While the program was responsible for the Robodebt scandal, it was updated in 2020 following class action claims against Centrelink.
Jobkeeper was intended to compensate workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and recipients were required to report the payment as an “ordinary income“.
“It could impact whether or not they were eligible for a rate of JobSeeker or other income support payment or what the correct rate would be,” said Chris Birrer, Services Australia compliance general manager.
After a review of the tax records of welfare recipients, Services Australia claimed that upwards of 11,000 recipients had debt.
A spokesperson for the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, Jeremy Poxon, spoke to the Guardian about the retrieval of payments by Services Australia.
He highlighted that debts had been laid on individuals who “engaged with this program in good faith”, however were possibly confused by the system.
“Judging by the amount of panicked calls we got about it, we – and the department – know Jobkeeper was a confusing mess of a system to access,” Poxon said.
He affirmed it was “disgusting, yet sadly unsurprising” that “billionaires like Gerry Harvey have been let completely off the hook”.
Robodebt 2.0 – the federal government wants $32 million from low-income people who were overpaid in the JobKeeper, but happy to let the businesses which kept $17 billion go free. The double-standards of Scott Morrison. #auspol
— Eddy Jokovich (@EddyJokovich) August 9, 2021
According to the Guardian, one Jobkeeper recipient was told they would be forced to pay interest if they delayed the debt payment.
Greens leader Adam Brandt criticised the government’s hypocrisy in allowing billionaire business owners to retain their Jobkeeper payments, while targeting smaller welfare recipients.
“It is outrageous that the government refuses to make billionaires and big corporations pay back the money that they clearly didn’t need to take from the public purse,” he said in an interview with ABC radio.
Just recently, the federal parliament rejected a bill demanding transparency from companies earning over $10m about the amounts of Jobkeeper they received.
“Yet at the same time it is hounding the most vulnerable people in the country who are doing their best to survive the pandemic.”
This recent scandal harks back to the devastating impacts of the Robodebt scheme, a Centrelink debt recovery program which was initiated in 2016.
Using an automated debt assessment system, Robodebt wrongly issued over 470,000 debts on welfare recipients.
Just last month, the federal government settled a class action case on Robodebt, agreeing to repay $1.8bn in unlawful debts.
If only Morrison had moved as fast to procure vaccines as he is to raise jobkeeper debts against individuals.
— Dr Sheep Devil Person (@noplaceforsheep) August 9, 2021
