Thursday 2 February 2017

Centrelink plays dumb over cases of overpayment caused by its own error


The fact that overpayment of welfare cash transfers are caused by departmental administrative error does occur is recognised in Australian social security law and regulations.

Here is one example of this.

Dept. Of Social Security, Guides to Social Policy Law, Family Assistance Guide, Version 1.191 - Released 3 January 2017:

7.3.2.10 Waiving a Debt Arising from Administrative Error…..

Debts arising solely from administrative error

The part of a debt that can be waived under this provision is called the 'administrative error proportion' of the debt. The administrative error proportion can be up to 100% of the amount of the debt.

The administrative error proportion of the debt must have been caused or contributed to by an administrative error made by the Commonwealth, for example, a decision made by a delegate of the Secretary. If the debtor has contributed in any way to the cause of the debt, that part of the debt cannot be waived under this provision.

The administrative error proportion of the debt must be waived if:

·       the payment was received in good faith and recovery of the debt would cause the debtor severe financial hardship, or
·       the payment was received in good faith and the debt has been raised in either of the periods below (whichever ends last):
o   after the end of the next income year following the income year in which the eligibility period or event which gave rise to the payment of FA occurs, or
o   more than 13 weeks from the day the FA payment was made that gave rise to the debt.

The Dept. of Human Services (Centrelink Included) delivered $115.8 billion in payments to customers/clients in 2015–16 and obviously keeps an account of monies involved in over payments.

Prior to fully automating its data matching and payment discrepancy assessments the department indicated in its 2015-16 annual report that 1.6% of all payments were overpayments due to administrative error. [Dept. of Human Services, 2015-16 Annual Report, Part 3—Management And Accountability, Social Security And Welfare Programme Compliance, Payment accuracy, correctness and integrity, p.114]

Just last year on 20 October 2016 The Daily Telegraph reported:

The Department of Human Services overpaid 1.5 million people a total of $1.5 billion, an average of $1000 each, during 2015-16. It clawed back $920 million by deducting money owed from ongoing social security payments or tax refunds.

But it wrote off $76 million in debts that were solely due to administrative error, were less than $50 “and not cost effective to pursue’’, or in cases where the debtor was subject to “extreme and unusual circumstances that interfere with their capacity to pay’’.

The Administrative Decisions Tribunal holds transcripts of cases which come before it, including those involving overpayment by Centrelink due to administrative error.

In fact Centrelink data on administrative errors has been recorded for many years (probably since 1998-99), as this excerpt from an Australian National Audit Office report in May 2006 shows:

In 2004–05, Centrelink identified one or more errors in 4 552 of the 10 048 RSS reviews conducted, with the total number of 7 037 errors distributed across these 4 552 reviews. Centrelink RSS Reviewers determined that 78 per cent of these errors were due to customer error (that is customer action or inaction). The remaining 22 per cent were categorised as due to Centrelink administrative error (predominately incomplete processing), albeit that only 5.1 per cent of these errors (or 3.4 per cent of reviews) had an immediate impact on the customer's payment.

In 2011-12 the government waived nearly 800,000 other overpayments - totalling $37 million - that were due to administrative error or categorised as "special circumstances" according to news.com.au.

Although Centrelink is frequently expressing overpayments due to administrative errors in percentage terms it seems that there is a specific Dataset 4 which counts the number of “customers” involved. [Social Security Policy Branch, Social Security Assurance Tracking Process Error Using Sample Surveys, 2009 power point presentation]

Yet despite a range of audit information being available to the department it could not even give Senator Siewert a ball park estimation of the number of overpayments due administrative errors which occurred last financial year, according to The Guardian on 31 January 2017:

Centrelink is unable to track how many cases of overpayment are caused by government error, according to responses it provided to a senate committee.

The Department of Human Services provided a series of responses to questions posed by the Greens senator Rachel Siewert on welfare overpayments. 

Siewert asked how many of the 629,917 customers overpaid last financial year were caused through system or administrative error by Centrelink. DHS responded: “The department does not currently capture the portion of overpayments raised as a result of system or administrative error.”

Siewert described that lack of information as outrageous, saying the department appeared not to be keeping track of its own mistakes. “The government must immediately work to establish how many people accessing the social safety net received an overpayment because of an administrative error,” she said.

“For the government to not collate that information is deeply concerning. It means there is no attempt to collect data and analyse how many vulnerable people are stuck with debts they were not responsible for creating.”

Centrelink has always required those who have been overpaid to pay the money back, including when the overpayment was not their fault. That is a separate issue to complaints about the new debt recovery system, which has been criticised for allegedly wrongly pursuing welfare debts from vulnerable Australians…..

The debt recovery system is being investigated by the commonwealth ombudsman, and will also come under the scrutiny of a Senate inquiry.

Siewert’s question on notice also asked whether there was a grace period to allow more time to hand back overpayments paid due to errors by the government. The department said there was no such grace period but customers were allowed to ask for extensions or payment plans because of financial hardship.

Siewert said a grace period, at least, should be introduced. “It’s unfair that people on low incomes have to pay back overpayments when the debt is not their fault,” she said.

“I know the government is hell-bent on making life as difficult as possible for people that access the social safety net, but I think we should show a bit of humanity to people that are stuck in a situation they didn’t create.”

In my honest opinion I don’t believe that Centrelink was acting in good faith when it gave the senator that answer. Hopefully as her question appeared to be on notice Centrelink will have a change of heart and supply the figure requested.

In 1947 the Atomic Clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight & by 2016 the clock stood at 3 minutes to midnight - Donald Trump's presidency has moved its hands to 2 minutes 30 seconds


Six days after Donald John Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America the Atomic Doomsday Clock moved closer to Armageddon.


It is two and a half minutes to midnight
2017 Doomsday Clock Statement
Science and Security Board
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Editor, John Mecklin

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Doomsday Clock, a graphic that appeared on the first cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as it transitioned from a six-page, black-and-white newsletter to a full-fledged magazine. For its first cover, the editors sought an image that represented a seriousness of purpose and an urgent call for action. The Clock, and the countdown to midnight that it implied, fit the bill perfectly. The Doomsday Clock, as it came to be called, has served as a globally recognized arbiter of the planet’s health and safety ever since.

Each year, the setting of the Doomsday Clock galvanizes a global debate about whether the planet is safer or more dangerous today than it was last year, and at key moments in recent history. Our founders would not be surprised to learn that the threats to the planet that the Science and Security Board now considers have expanded since 1947. In fact, the Bulletin’s first editor, Eugene Rabinowitch, noted that one of the purposes of the Bulletin was to respond and offer solutions to the “Pandora’s box of modern science,” recognizing the speed at which technological advancement was occurring, and the demanding questions it would present.

In 1947 there was one technology with the potential to destroy the planet, and that was nuclear power. Today, rising temperatures, resulting from the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels, will change life on Earth as we know it, potentially destroying or displacing it from significant portions of the world, unless action is taken today, and in the immediate future. Future technological innovation in biology, artificial intelligence, and the cyber realm may pose similar global challenges. The knotty problems that innovations in these fields may present are not yet fully realized, but the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board tends to them with a watchful eye.

This year’s Clock deliberations felt more urgent than usual. On the big topics that concern the board, world leaders made too little progress in the face of continuing turbulence. In addition to the existential threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change, new global realities emerged, as trusted sources of information came under attack, fake news was on the rise, and words were used in cavalier and often reckless ways. As if to prove that words matter and fake news is dangerous, Pakistan’s foreign minister issued a blustery statement, a tweet actually, flexing Pakistan’s nuclear muscle—in response to a fabricated “news” story about Israel. Today’s complex global environment is in need of deliberate and considered policy responses. It is ever more important that senior leaders across the globe calm rather than stoke tensions that could lead to war, either by accident or miscalculation.

I once again commend the board for approaching its task with the seriousness it deserves. Bulletin Editor-in-Chief John Mecklin did a remarkable job pulling together this document and reflecting the in-depth views and opinions of the board. Considerable thanks goes to our supporters including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, MacArthur Foundation, Ploughshares Fund, David Weinberg and Jerry Newton, as well as valued supporters across the year.

I hope the debate engendered by the 2017 setting of the Clock raises the level of conversation, promotes calls to action, and helps citizens around the world hold their leaders responsible for delivering a safer and healthier planet.

Rachel Bronson, PhD
Executive Director and Publisher
26 January, 2017
Chicago, IL

It is two and a half minutes to midnight

Editor’s note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new technologies emerging in other domains. A printable PDF of this statement, complete with the executive director’s statement and Science and Security Board biographies, is available here.

To: Leaders and citizens of the world
Re: It is 30 seconds closer to midnight
Date: January 26, 2017
Over the course of 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change.
The United States and Russia—which together possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons—remained at odds in a variety of theaters, from Syria to Ukraine to the borders of NATO; both countries continued wide-ranging modernizations of their nuclear forces, and serious arms control negotiations were nowhere to be seen. North Korea conducted its fourth and fifth underground nuclear tests and gave every indication it would continue to develop nuclear weapons delivery capabilities. Threats of nuclear warfare hung in the background as Pakistan and India faced each other warily across the Line of Control in Kashmir after militants attacked two Indian army bases.
The climate change outlook was somewhat less dismal—but only somewhat. In the wake of the landmark Paris climate accord, the nations of the world have taken some actions to combat climate change, and global carbon dioxide emissions were essentially flat in 2016, compared to the previous year. Still, they have not yet started to decrease; the world continues to warm. Keeping future temperatures at less-than-catastrophic levels requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions far beyond those agreed to in Paris—yet little appetite for additional cuts was in evidence at the November climate conference in Marrakech.
This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a US presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board takes a broad and international view of existential threats to humanity, focusing on long-term trends. Because of that perspective, the statements of a single person—particularly one not yet in office—have not historically influenced the board’s decision on the setting of the Doomsday Clock.
But wavering public confidence in the democratic institutions required to deal with major world threats do affect the board’s decisions. And this year, events surrounding the US presidential campaign—including cyber offensives and deception campaigns apparently directed by the Russian government and aimed at disrupting the US election—have brought American democracy and Russian intentions into question and thereby made the world more dangerous than was the case a year ago.
For these reasons, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has decided to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes and 30 seconds to midnight.
The board’s decision to move the clock less than a full minute—something it has never before done—reflects a simple reality: As this statement is issued, Donald Trump has been the US president only a matter of days. Many of his cabinet nominations are not yet confirmed by the Senate or installed in government, and he has had little time to take official action.
Just the same, words matter, and President Trump has had plenty to say over the last year. Both his statements and his actions as president-elect have broken with historical precedent in unsettling ways. He has made ill-considered comments about expanding the US nuclear arsenal. He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice related to international security, including the conclusions of intelligence experts. And his nominees to head the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency dispute the basics of climate science.
In short, even though he has just now taken office, the president’s intemperate statements, lack of openness to expert advice, and questionable cabinet nominations have already made a bad international security situation worse.
Last year, and the year before, we warned that world leaders were failing to act with the speed and on the scale required to protect citizens from the extreme danger posed by climate change and nuclear war. During the past year, the need for leadership only intensified—yet inaction and brinksmanship have continued, endangering every person, everywhere on Earth.
Who will lead humanity away from global disaster?

Wednesday 1 February 2017

The four weeks of January 2017 saw four women die violently in Australia


Destroy the Joint, 31 January 2017

Thousands of jobs have gone from Dept Human Services & Centrelink in last five years and the headcount was down to 30,210 by May 2016


It is no accident that the post-September 2013 drive to slash public service numbers and funding was significantly impacting on the Dept. Of Human Services at the same time it sought to fully automate as much of Centrelink’s service delivery as possible.

Between its 2012-13 annual report and 2015-16 annual report the department had lost 5,628 staff due to budget cuts and make do measures were not meeting service delivery needs.

It was also foreseeable that Turnbull & Co would choose Centrelink clients as guinea pigs in an attempt at fully automating data matching with a view to further departmental cost-cutting – after all welfare clients are apparently considered the lowest of the low by a majority of Liberal and Nationals parliamentarians.

Given the fact that this federal government had also decided to be digitally ‘agile and innovative’ - which appears to be code for fast and sloppy - the debacle which followed was almost inevitable.


BACKGROUND

Government News, 2 May 2016:

Charities, welfare groups and unions have pleaded with Treasurer Scott Morrison to release the pressure on the Department of Human Services (DHS) by funding more staff and better IT systems in the federal Budget.

In a joint statement, 14 organisations: Carers Australia, St Vincent de Paul, the Welfare Rights Centre the Community and Public Sector Union, Australian Council of Social Services, Children and Young People with Disability Australia, ACT Council of Social Services, National Union of Students, Fair Go For Pensioners, Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association, People With Disability, the Consumer Action Law Centre and Financial Counselling Australia demanded the government “properly fund” the DHS to “provide the Australian public with the Medicare, Centrelink and Child Support services they need and deserve.”

DHS has fielded a range of allegations over the past year, including:
·         Centrelink bunging Youth Allowance and Austudy payments
·         Call waiting times of more than an hour to get through to Centrelink
·         One-quarter of all 57 million phone calls to Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support agencies last year going unanswered (Auditor General’s report 2015)Complaints up almost 19 per cent on last year, and customer satisfaction is down by per cent (DHS Annual Report)
·         An avalanche of customer complaints about online services, particularly myGov
·         A litany of complaints about mobile apps for child support, Medicare and Centrelink

In its statement, the coalition of not-for-profit groups said the federal Budget should:
·         Restore adequate funding to DHS
·         Invest in high quality, in-house IT systems so clients can access a reliable online service
·         Increase DHS permanent staff numbers so that claims and queries are processed quickly and clients who need over-the-phone or in-person services can get them
·         Ensure rural and regional Australia has fair access to government services.

The statement said:
“Millions of people in Australia rely on the Department of Human Services every day, for essential services including social security payments, Medicare, child support and aged care.
“Australia needs these essential services to be both accessible and of high quality, and employees of DHS resourced to do the best they can for everyone needing assistance.
“However, after years of budget cuts, DHS systems and staff are under extreme pressure.
“People who rely on Centrelink expect and deserve high quality public services. Employees in DHS must have the resources to deliver high quality public services. People are trying to do the right thing and reports changes as required, but the system is letting them down…….

The Canberra Times, 10 May 2016:

Department of Human Services officials have confirmed that 918 workers will be shed in 2016-17….

The federal government service-delivery workhorse, which runs Centrelink, Medicare and the Child Support Agency, will see also see its funding reduced by $100 million year-on-year, thanks in part to a "special" efficiency cut of $20 million a year….

Mr Jenkin also confirmed the budget papers got the department's headcount wrong, reporting 30,102 when it should have been 30,210.

The department's finance boss said the staff cuts were a direct result of the budget cuts.

In the Dept. of Human Services Annual Report 2015-16 overall staffing levels were shown as:

NOTE: It is likely that as many as est. 3,796 of these staff were non-ongoingat the start of the 2015-16 financial year.

The results of payment discrepancies released for action in the 2015-16 financial year were:

* 109,355,545 data matches undertaken by the department [DHS Annual Report 2015-16, p.241];

* cost of the data matching program (including departmental salaries) was $8,327,500 [ibid, 243];

* 4,904 payment discrepancy notices sent out to clients and 1,657 (or 33.78%) of these notices were later found to be false debts [op.cit., p.241]; and


* an unspecified number of debt notices were waived for reasons not stated.

Since Centrelink began sending out fully automated payment discrepancy/debt notices in mid-2016 there have been 169,000 initial letters sent.

Based on Dept. of Human Services 2015-16 admissions, this suggests that at least an est. 57,088 of these letters contained inaccurate payment discrepancies/false debts which can be verified as such by paperwork held by Centrelink clients and/or their previous employer (if the business holds such records indefinitely).

Centrelink clients telling their own stories can be found at www.not.mydebt.com.au.