News Robodebt Royal Commission

wendog33

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The Robodebt RC has been bubbling away with exposure of the massive collusion of our public servants. For anyone interested, it's been like pulling teeth to get them to answer but this is a classic :grinning: The KC and Commissioner have been brilliant and trying hard to get to the bottom of things.

 

Kung fu man

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The Robodebt RC has been bubbling away with exposure of the massive collusion of our public servants. For anyone interested, it's been like pulling teeth to get them to answer but this is a classic :grinning: The KC and Commissioner have been brilliant and trying hard to get to the bottom of things.

What a piece of shit human! my mother in law was harrassed by these assholes and drove her to wits end, shes 80 and couldn't understand why she kept getting told she owed thousands all the while they were reducing her pension and sending her bills.
 

wendog33

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What a piece of shit human! my mother in law was harrassed by these assholes and drove her to wits end, shes 80 and couldn't understand why she kept getting told she owed thousands all the while they were reducing her pension and sending her bills.
Yes so many were harrassed and some suicided bc of not being able to cope and it was all illegal.


Rather than them prove your liability, Robodebt was set up that you had to prove you didn't owe them money. Mate that guy is only a small fraction of what's been coming out at the RC. Whole public service depts were corrupted in dealing with this and lied or covered up to the Ombudsman.
 

Bob dog

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They ripped me off, got labelled and embezzler, then got 2500 back, fuck you jack.
Life isnt so clear cut when you can't work full time.
 

senshidog

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50/50 on this.

Some people knew that they were getting paid overs or exploiting the system and turned a blind eye to it (expecting that Centrelink would never chase it), and now they are.

I mean you either have debt, or you don't. There's no middle ground.

If you have debt, you have to pay it back eventually. If you don't have debt, it's easy enough to prove as such.
 

Alan79

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50/50 on this.

Some people knew that they were getting paid overs or exploiting the system and turned a blind eye to it (expecting that Centrelink would never chase it), and now they are.

I mean you either have debt, or you don't. There's no middle ground.

If you have debt, you have to pay it back eventually. If you don't have debt, it's easy enough to prove as such.
Here's the thing though. If you were looking for work and found something for a couple of weeks (for basically a one off payment of $1,500) which was then finished, the program they used would adjust your pay based on the assumption that the temporary payment of $1,500 was going to be paid every fortnight. You would then honestly report the money you earned or didn't earn afterwards, but your payments were cut and they'd fine you whatever multiple of that one off fortnight's work while cutting you off. So you had say a month's worth of debt $3,000 while having no income based on a system that was just wrong. Meanwhile you lost your house, couldn't put food on the table etc when you had followed the rules.

This didn't punish people doing the wrong thing, it punished people who were struggling as well and reporting honestly.

The reason that turd in the videos above was squirming is because he's probably worked out that he sat back and contributed to people losing their homes and in some cases hitting a point of despair where they killed themselves.
 

wendog33

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50/50 on this.

Some people knew that they were getting paid overs or exploiting the system and turned a blind eye to it (expecting that Centrelink would never chase it), and now they are.

I mean you either have debt, or you don't. There's no middle ground.

If you have debt, you have to pay it back eventually. If you don't have debt, it's easy enough to prove as such.
It didn't work like that.

They income averaged over the whole year and it was/is illegal to use notional income averaging when assessing tax or income support. People who got the baby bonus payment even were caught up in this through no fault of their own.
 
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Gene Krupa

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50/50 on this.

Some people knew that they were getting paid overs or exploiting the system and turned a blind eye to it (expecting that Centrelink would never chase it), and now they are.

I mean you either have debt, or you don't. There's no middle ground.

If you have debt, you have to pay it back eventually. If you don't have debt, it's easy enough to prove as such.
You do know, people with robodebt, had no debt.
 

wendog33

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You do know, people with robodebt, had no debt.
Cost the Govt something like 1.5 billion to reimburse all those who were caught up in it and sought refunds and restitution.

RC discovering they knew it was illegal when it first started. They knew many were distressed and killing themselves and now we find it was all illegal and PS was covering it up and not listening to prior legal advice they sought advising it did not comply with existing Australian law.

 

Psycho Doggie

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I mean you either have debt, or you don't. There's no middle ground.

If you have debt, you have to pay it back eventually. If you don't have debt, it's easy enough to prove as such.
Would you be prepared to have a closer look at some of the relevant information around this? I ask because I've been keeping a close eye on this, and have been for years now, and what you say strikes me as not well informed.
 

Gene Krupa

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Would you be prepared to have a closer look at some of the relevant information around this? I ask because I've been keeping a close eye on this, and have been for years now, and what you say strikes me as not well informed.
There are some morons who think some people are in the wrong. Sad they are among us.
 

Doogie

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These automated systems are a scam.

Did my tax last year - received a warning that because of my job description, the level of claims I made were well over the industry average and I would be audited that return. My tax refund was around $1500 and was all legit. Didn't want the hassle so I changed my job description to technical advisor.

This year, probably pushed the envelope a bit more and claimed $2500. No message at all.

Go figure.
 

Natboy

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I’ve never registered for centrelink, department of housing or any government handout but can appreciate how stressful it would’ve been for older people, especially if not tech savy.

I received a land tax bill for a few hundred grand once but I knew it was an error, didn’t panic and had the means to sort it out. To commit suicide over a debt is pretty extreme though and those poor people may have had underlying mental issues unfortunately :(
 

Gene Krupa

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I’ve never registered for centrelink, department of housing or any government handout but can appreciate how stressful it would’ve been for older people, especially if not tech savy.

I received a land tax bill for a few hundred grand once but I knew it was an error, didn’t panic and had the means to sort it out. To commit suicide over a debt is pretty extreme though and those poor people may have had underlying mental issues unfortunately :(
They were.being harrassed. Also the government 'stole' some of their savings to payback a non existent debt.
 

senshidog

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Would you be prepared to have a closer look at some of the relevant information around this? I ask because I've been keeping a close eye on this, and have been for years now, and what you say strikes me as not well informed.
Quite possibly. I honestly haven't followed it too closely.

I've been on Jobseeker in recent times, and the system (at least from what I can tell) is pretty infalliable.

You report each fortnight you and your partners earnings and hours, and that then reduces the amount you get from Centrelink.

They already know my partners income, so can check bank records if I'm lieing to them or misreporting.

That said I can certainly understand that people on Centrelink would be those struggling the most. I've literally had $20 in my bank account some weeks, and coupled with the fact I'm reporting my wifes pre tax income (which can be anything from $1000 - $1300 a week), there was one stage I went through an entire month without a cent from them. When you are putting in $600pw rent from that, plus other expenditures (like food, phone bills, internet, power bills, etc), it can get rather tight.

Many people just think that people on Jobseeker get the full $750 a fortnight (or whatever it is), and that's far from the truth.

But back to my point, in that if people are already financially struggling and have financial stress, then if Centrelink are saying they have an imaginary debt (and enforcing it), that could definitely break some people.

The question needs to be asked though, how did the debt (and subsequent chasing), end up on the system to begin with. Like was it information miskeyed, or a systems glitch that applied debt to a select number of customers, etc. That's what I meant by that debt doesn't just come from nowhere.
 

wendog33

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They were.being harrassed. Also the government 'stole' some of their savings to payback a non existent debt.
This kind of harrassment you mean?

They knew at that stage via legal advice that the method of assessing non existent debt was illegal and they knew the vulnerable were distressed, couldn't get thru to Centrelink and some killed themselves. Our Govt wilfully did this :(

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