Foreign-bound welfare cheats grounded under same laws that stop child support dodgers fleeing Australia

WELFARE cheats who owe money will be banned from leaving Australia under the same laws used to stop child support dodgers travelling overseas.

Places connected to the identity fraud and murdered woman Karlie Jade Pearce-Stevenson mother of Khandalyce Kiara Pearce. Centrelink office Salisbury where the id fraud was allegedly commited.

TAXPAYER-funded welfare cheats who owe money to the government will be banned from leaving Australia under the same laws used to stop child support dodgers travelling overseas.

In a crackdown on rorters who fail to pay back welfare debt, the Turnbull government will introduce legislation to ­impose Departure Prohibition Orders on the worst fraudsters.

As revealed in The Daily Telegraph last month, the debt bill on wrongly or fraudulently claimed welfare payments has risen to almost $5 billion.

DPOs are already in place to stop people leaving Australia with child support liabilities.

Similar provisions were added to anti-terrorism laws in 2005 to stop people leaving to become foreign fighters.

Social Services Minister ­Stuart Robert said he wanted to apply those same rules to ­welfare cheats and would introduce legislation when parliament resumed in February.

More than one million ­welfare recipients are classed as owing a debt to the Commonwealth through fraud or a ­discrepancy between their PAYG income and welfare claims. The average owed is estimated to be $4500 per person.

The government will also seek to abolish a six-year ­statute of limitations on debt ­recovery from welfare cheats, which is currently flushing away $300 million of taxpayers’ money every year.

Both measures will require legislation and support of Labor and the crossbench in the Senate to be passed. The measures were contained in the government’s midyear economic fiscal outlook, released on Tuesday.

“Extending DPOs from their focus on recovery of child ­support debts to recover all ­outstanding social welfare debts ... will bring greater consistency to debt recovery,” the papers­­ ­revealed.

“Removing the existing ­six-year statute of limitations for social welfare debts ... will align social welfare debt recovery with other Commonwealth debt recoveries where there is no such limitation.”

About 1.4 million people have a discrepancy between welfare payments and PAYG income.

“The government has ­already had significant success in identifying new debts in line with our budget commitments,” Mr Robert said.