Another person scammed by Centrelink.
So she says. No other evidence of what did or did not happen is given. We have no way of deciding if this person is honest or not - other than her strident claims. Services Australia gave generic answers as they are constrained by privacy laws from giving out any personal information. They cannot defend Centrelink, the prosecutor or anybody else by explaining their side of what happened.
There is no evidence given that Centrelink did anything wrong. That does not mean they are innocent, it means we just donât know. The report of the first case is then run into a second case years later related to the robodebt scandal. Without saying so the journalist invites us to conclude that the complainant has been wronged twice. We know nothing about that, it is quite possible the two have nothing to do with each other.
So how do we determine if this person is a completely innocent victim of a cruel and heartless system, a manipulative criminal spinning a story for their own benefit or somewhere in between? We cannot.
I wish you were more discriminating and did not report cases that are so uncertain.
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Yes they can explain if they choose to do so. It has to be the Minister or someone with the delegation to do so. It is a step not very likely to happen but it does and is often followed by strident public outcry when the complainers realise their Privacy is not rock solid.
Depending on what Human Services decide is the required response will determine if we see that formal delegated public response.
Sometimes Human Services do not respond as they are the offenders eg Robodebts until forced by Courts or Inquiries to do so.
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I would like to see this change, not just for Centrelink but in all such similar cases.
If someone goes public in this manner, they waive their right to privacy in respect of their dealings with the company or organisation about which they are going public.
Otherwise it is a pointless story, where by definition we only hear one half of the story and one perspective of the allegations.
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An article regarding the Federal Government being warned on 76 occassions that their robodebt scam was illegal.
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It will be interesting to see if internal memos and briefings to the Minister will be made public. My guess is that at least some internal opinion and qualified advice was that the policy was illegal and that the project ought not proceed.
The question is at what level was this view ignored? Did senior public servants reverse their own experts and say to the Ministerâs office that this would be a great little earner and the Minister agreed or did they support their experts and say it was very risky but the Minister said do it anyway?
Ministers will always attempt to make the Service wear it. That may be justified in this case or not depending on the advice given. If it is not will the officers told to carry the can go quietly or drop the Minister in it?
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Interesting link there - MSN embedding a Guardian article on the MSN site?
The only way anything will be made public is if there is a Royal Commission - and thatâs the last thing the current government would want looking at this scandal.
It is interesting to compare to the âpink battsâ Royal Commission - which was clearly politically motivated - and compare the number of lives ruined by each program.
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The recently completed (Feb 2019) Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry made numerous recommendation. One outcome has been the payment of compensation with interest where mistakes have been made or services not delivered. These payments included amounts due to deceased persons, subsequently forwarded to the representatives of their estate.
We recently received such a payment gating back more than 7 years to 2013.
In earlier posts concerning CentreLink and how far back it is obligated to adjust payments owed to their clients:
Money owed in the other direction though:
Likelihood of a RC into CentreLink and payment systems ⊠for everything else there are options?
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Well, it will be but
- public servants have traditionally argued that they provide frank and fearless advice on the condition that it is not made public
- there are always nay-sayers as well as yes-men - so you can cherry-pick the advice that you want
In other words, for the first point, if it becomes routine that this advice is made public then public servants will provide heavily qualified, vague, CYA, waffle-speak documents and only provide frank, genuine advice verbally.
Maybe, but if the advice was not to go near the scheme and the Minister insisted the Min might go carefully saying he was badly advised, lest it be leaked.
I suspect it will be obscured as much as possible.
Another victim of Centrelinkâs robodebt scam.
Centrelink still owes some 28,000 persons some $24 million from their robodebt scam of whom 3,300 have already died waiting.
âOn Wednesday, Mr Robert announced the government would resume debt recoery processes on Monday, after pausing collection during the coronavirus pandemic.â
Hopefully they might actually get it right this time.
The Federal Governmnet rolls over when the robodebt scam court case was due to start.
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Having the debts cancelled and got some compensation there is now a cry to investigate who made the call. The matter most certainly went to cabinet and would have passed through the Ministerâs hands. I believe it to be a near certainty that the likelihood of the debt calculation method being wrong was raised at some level by the public service before it was approved. These people do understand the Act that they administer. Somebody would have put in writing that it isnât right.
The question is at what level was this advice silenced or ignored and by whom? I want to know. I think many others do too.
It isnât just the money, or the principle that administrators and politicians must obey the law, it is the great pain that an elected government inflicted on the most vulnerable of its people. Unless you have been there or seen it happen you cannot imagine the impact those debt notices or having money grabbed would have on those in such circumstances. This is elevating disempowering to a new level. This was the greatest sin and there must be justice.
I donât often use the word but yes I mean sin, Old Testament (or any book of morals ) doing your fellow man wrong, failing to protect the innocent, unleashing unjustified power on the weak.
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Some of that pain led some to take their lives, how do you rectify, make that right. How do you console the families or make their loss rightâŠI think you canât but the effort needs to be made to at least show remorse.
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An article regarding the robodebt scam victims.
Government is on a roll. Retrospective legislation and all. Why worry about rules when they can be changed retrospectively to disadvantage one or even make them into criminals? The latest chapter - will they get away with it? Odds on! No buck stops anywhere in government.
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I guess that is countering retrospective judicial decisions - and thatâs the way it always is with judicial decisions i.e. you do something and then X years later you find out whether it was OK or not.
The actual judicial decision here always looked a bit âoffâ to me. Itâs not fair dinkum is it that you would be paid a 25% casual loading and then expect to get permie entitlements on top of that? As it is on appeal to the High Court letâs wait and see what happens.
According to the article, thatâs an $18 billion+ scam. Makes some of the other scams in this omnibus official scam topic look a bit small time?
If the government is genuine about providing a pathway from casual work to being a permie (and for sure it is reasonable to question that!) then that should be a win for employees. Trying to double dip on that looks greedy.
They donât give up going for the jugular with âgame plansâ designed to encourage overstepping.
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Hopefully. the Government will budget for another $1.2 billion or so for the next legal actions against them.
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