Allman-Payne to press Plibersek on statutory time limit on historic welfare debts
The Albanese government accepted all recommendations made by Robodebt commissioner Catherine Holmes but has yet to legislate a cap that would prevent raising of decades-old debts.
Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne has urged Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek to waive historic welfare debts raised through the unlawful income apportionment calculation method and introduce a six-year statutory time limit on historic welfare debts when parliament resumes on Tuesday.
“I write with great concern following the news that over 100,000 income support recipients may yet again be pursued by your department for historical debt notices, once more placing vulnerable people at risk of financial and personal crisis,” Senator Allman-Payne wrote to Ms Plibersek on Friday.
On Tuesday Department of Social Services secretary Michael Lye said reassessment of historical debts raised through income apportionment would restart following a Federal Court decision that upheld the department’s revised construction of the legislation.
“It is cruel and completely unreasonable to force income support recipients to disprove allegations of overpayments dating back decades and to hold recipients to the department’s onerous and technocratic standards,” Senator Allman-Payne wrote.
Income apportionment was in use from the early 1990s to late 2020, and averaged pay across Centrelink’s fortnightly reporting periods if a welfare recipient’s pay slip didn’t align and/or didn’t specify the days worked during that reporting period. It has never been used by the Albanese government.
A Commonwealth Ombudsman investigation found as many as 150,000 unlawful debts dating back several decades might have been raised through income apportionment. The average age of those debts is 19 years, with the oldest among them dating back to 1979.
Recovery of those debts was paused in 2020 while the government the Federal Court decision handed down by justices Thomas Thawley, Lisa Hespe and Geoffrey Kennett on Tuesday.
When asked by The Australian, the secretary did not say if debt recovery would proceed if reassessment was not explicitly requested by the debtor.
“To prevent another Robodebt, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme recommended introducing a time limit to prevent the department from pursuing debts which are more than six years old, and to ban the pursuit of debts from income support recipients who are experiencing hardship,” Senator Allman-Payne wrote.
Robodebt – formally known as Online Compliance Intervention – used Australian Taxation Office data to average the income of welfare recipients over 26 fortnights for the purposes of recalculating their welfare benefits.
A 2023 royal commission found the method was unlawful and commissioner Catherine Holmes made 57 recommendations, including the legislation of a statutory time limit on historic welfare debts.
The Albanese government accepted all the commissioner’s recommendations but has yet to legislate the cap.
“Given it would require enormous amounts of the department’s time and resources to manually reassess and review over 100,000 cases, to continue to pursue these debts would be not only cruel but a petty and absurd use of taxpayer resources,” Senator Allman-Payne wrote.
The Queensland senator will put pressure on Ms Plibersek when parliament resumes on Tuesday to cancel debts raised through income apportionment before December 2020 and legislate the six-year cap on debt-recovery practices.
“I urge you to act now to prevent further harm to welfare recipients and to finally put the Robodebt era behind us,” Senator Allman-Payne wrote.
On Tuesday Ms Plibersek said in a joint statement with Finance Minister Katy Gallagher the government would “develop a suitable response” following the Federal Court’s decision.
The Social Services Minister declined to say if she would respond to Senator Allman-Payne’s correspondence or if she would introduce legislation regarding the statutory time limit to the parliament next week.
She also declined to comment on reports she was considering waiving the income apportioned debts at a cost of about $1.1bn to the government.
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