Coalition doubles the catch of Centrelink cheats
THE Turnbull government says it is catching twice as many welfare cheats as Labor did in power, forcing those who lied to Centrelink to repay the extra money they took home.
NSW
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THE Turnbull government says it is catching twice as many welfare cheats as Labor did in power, forcing those who lied to Centrelink to repay the extra money they took home.
With Opposition Leader Bill Shorten accusing the government of treating welfare recipients like “criminals”, the Turnbull government has revealed details of some of Australia’s 135,000 welfare cheats who lied to Centrelink.
Some welfare recipients had been hiding incomes of up to $100,000 from Centrelink.
Human Services Minister Alan Tudge accused Labor of letting cheats off the hook.
“Our system is designed to identify when an overpayment has occurred and to recoup the money for the taxpayer,” he said. “Labor has been critical of our debt-recovery system and says they would revert to what they did in the past.
“Well in the past, they failed to do the proper checks and simply let people off the hook even when it was clear overpayments had been made.”
The Turnbull government has gone through welfare payments made under Labor to catch people deliberately defrauding the system.
In one of the worst examples, one man received welfare based on a salary of only $5000 when his real income was $100,000, according to information his employer gave to the Australian Taxation Office.
In another case, a man who has received Newstart since 2001 declared an income of less than $11,000 to Centrelink but ATO data showed he had earned $65,000.
A woman told Centrelink she earned just $23,000 but ATO records found the true figure was $69,000. She is now repaying the difference by 15 per cent being withheld from her Newstart allowance.
Under Labor, in 2012-13, there were 109,600 discrepancies in the income declared to Centrelink compared with ATO data. This number was three times higher at the end of the Howard government when there were 461,891 cases where welfare recipients were asked to repay debts.
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