Opinion
My stepmother was a robo-debt victim, and I missed it
I didn’t realise until too late that my stepmother’s private anguish and embarrassment reflected a costly public policy failure called robo-debt.
Jennifer HewettColumnistA few years before Australians had experienced the bizarre COVID-19 notion of closed state borders, I would use regular visits to Western Australia to look in on my stepmother in her aged care home in Perth.
Patricia Hewett was by then in her 80s, largely confined to her room. But as a widow with no assets and no income beyond her pension, she was delighted to finally have a secure home after years of financial struggles with rent.
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