Asylum-seekers caught in $4bn welfare crackdown

Asylum-seekers have been caught up in the federal government’s $4bn welfare debt recovery controversy.

Asylum-seekers on temporary visas have been caught up in the federal government’s $4 billion welfare debt recovery controv­ersy, with some being told they owe thousands in allegedly overpaid money and risk their future residency if they don’t give it back.

The Australian has obtained letters relating to one case where an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan was issued with a debt notice for almost $2000 apparently incurred when he was working part-time two years ago.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection wrote to the man — who was on a bridging visa with work rights at the time but who is now on a temporary protection visa — about a period when he was receiving 89 per cent of the Centrelink special benefit under the Status Resolution Support Services.

This is about $230 a week.

“DHS have advised that your income for those periods on the invoices were (sic) not taken into consideration when you were paid SRSS benefits,” the letter says. “If you are experiencing financial difficulties and are unable to pay your debt in full at this time, we may be able to allow you to make payments by instalments or to defer payments for a period of time.”

Crucially, however, the man — who asked not to be named — said he always reported his income and had his payments reduced because of this.

He said: “I said to them, ‘Can you please give me the details, how are you saying this happened, how can I dispute the charges?’

“That money is a lot of money to someone who was only on $215 a week. I have sent them multiple emails and they keep saying ‘Your income was not taken into ­account’. I reported it, that means they probably made a mistake.”

Asylum-seekers have been reminded in their debt notices that “an outstanding debt to the ­commonwealth can affect future visa grants and/or re-entry into Australia”.

The Department of Human Services data-matching program went live last year and before Christmas was “initiating 20,000 compliance interventions a week”, up from 20,000 a year.

But there are flaws in the ­approach that seeks to integrate income reporting to the tax office with records in human services.

According to the DHS website, the automatic system sometimes errs. “If employment is for a part of a year only, averaging over 12 months will not result in a correct result if the customer should have received a full rate at other times of the year,” it says.

“If income varied greatly ­during the year, the result may be incorrect.”

DHS has three debt recovery agencies contracted for almost $18 million until 2019 to help chase money it says was overpaid. The largest of these, Dun & Bradstreet, has a contract for $10.8m. In 2013-14 it recovered almost $62m from 33,226 clients for which it received a bonus of $6.8m.

A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said: “Where people receive public money to which they are not entitled, it is a requirement for government departments to recover those moneys.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services said 15,000 debt recovery notices had been issued to asylum-seekers since April 2014.