Politics

[JBOMBER]

Another good example along the same lines as Wim would be somebody going to the media to claim their partner died of a heart attack waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance. This obviously attacks the entire service & reduces the public confidence in it. If the truth was that the ambulance was there in 5 minutes, the patient had overdosed on drugs, & his partner was violently trying to prevent paramedics reviving him then I expect the ambulance service should release those facts in order to protect their reputations.

Right now people who might be considering using centrelink have been sold only a story of chaos & conflict. I’m not suggesting genuine criticism of the service should be ignored but its important to have an accurate picture of whats actually happening not whats politically opportunistic for your cause.

[beastie]

I can't see how releasing a users details, no matter what or how sensitive they are perceived, builds trust with a government department that is supposed to support people. If they are fighting a battle for credibility with the larger public, they are doing the wrong thing by their clients to do so.

Again, mistruth unchallenged becomes accepted truths. I get that this is the latest stick to attack the Gvt with but nobody seems to be addressing the facts here. A woman chose to use the media to attack the credibility of centrelink who in turn used the same medium to refute the claim hence trying to restore the public’s confidence in the service. I can’t see how correcting a lying opportunist story is somehow invading her privacy - she, nobody else decided to make this a media story, bad luck if she doesn’t like the media spotlight reflected back. You may think Gvt departments are simply there to be abused, I don’t.

Don’t think that I don’t understand what you are saying but I come at it from the point of view that Centrelink is a public service funded by us and that their decision to use people’s details to argue a case through the media, no matter the complaint, does nothing to help their cause. Does it raise your faith in them? Was their information correct or in context? You have taken it as gospel at a time when they are regularly shown to have very untrue information and/or misleading assumptions of their users.

I think they are better served by keeping a high level of confidentiality and instead releasing information that shows they are acting in good faith. They can’t do that at all at the moment.

[JBOMBER]

I can't see how releasing a users details, no matter what or how sensitive they are perceived, builds trust with a government department that is supposed to support people. If they are fighting a battle for credibility with the larger public, they are doing the wrong thing by their clients to do so.

Again, mistruth unchallenged becomes accepted truths. I get that this is the latest stick to attack the Gvt with but nobody seems to be addressing the facts here. A woman chose to use the media to attack the credibility of centrelink who in turn used the same medium to refute the claim hence trying to restore the public’s confidence in the service. I can’t see how correcting a lying opportunist story is somehow invading her privacy - she, nobody else decided to make this a media story, bad luck if she doesn’t like the media spotlight reflected back. You may think Gvt departments are simply there to be abused, I don’t.

[beastie]

I can’t see how releasing a users details, no matter what or how sensitive they are perceived, builds trust with a government department that is supposed to support people. If they are fighting a battle for credibility with the larger public, they are doing the wrong thing by their clients to do so.

[Reboot]

Exclusive: minister’s office sent journalist internal briefings about Centrelink client
Human services minister Alan Tudge’s office mistakenly sent details of personal circumstances, relationship and tax history

The office of human services minister, Alan Tudge, mistakenly sent a journalist internal departmental briefings about a welfare recipient’s personal circumstances, which included additional detail on her relationship and tax history.

Senior departmental figures were grilled at Senate estimates on Thursday about the release of welfare recipient Andie Fox’s personal information last month.

Fox had written an opinion piece critical of Centrelink and its handling of her debt, which ran in Fairfax Media in February. The government released her personal details to Fairfax journalist Paul Malone, who subsequently published a piece attacking Fox and questioning the veracity of her claims.

Two responses were given to the journalist, one from the department of human services and the other from Tudge.

The department said its response – three dot points containing only minimal detail on Fox’s personal history – was cleared by lawyers and was lawful. The minister’s office then added two quotes from Tudge and sent its own response to Malone.

Guardian Australia can now reveal that the minister’s office also accidentally sent the journalist two internal briefing documents, marked “for official use only”, which had been prepared by the department.

Those documents contained additional information on Fox and her personal circumstances, which went beyond the dot points prepared by the department. They included further detail of her relationship history, including when she separated from her partner.

Those documents were then sent to Malone. The documents were also mistakenly sent to Guardian Australia when it raised questions about the disclosure of Fox’s personal information.

No mention of those documents was made in Senate estimates on Thursday, despite repeated questioning of what the minister had disclosed to Malone. Tudge’s office has now conceded the documents were sent to Malone in error. But the office says it was of no consequence, because all of their contents had been legally cleared by the department.

A welfare recipient’s personal details are considered protected information under social security law, and any unlawful disclosure is considered a criminal offence. Earlier, the department told estimates that social security law only allowed it to disclose the minimal amount of information needed to correct the public record.

Department of human services secretary, Kathryn Campbell, said Fox had made unfounded claims, that may have caused other welfare recipients to believe they were not complying with their own requirements. She said that made it necessary to release Fox’s personal information to correct the record.

“That’s why we felt that it was appropriate to release the information, so that people knew it was important to file their tax returns and tell us about changes in their circumstances,” Campbell said.

She rejected any claim that the department was targeting anyone who criticised Centrelink. “It’s about whether the people of Australia are going to continue to have confidence [in the system] … so senator when we look at each case, first of all I ask, have we made a mistake?” Campbell said.

“We know that that sometimes happens, that’s our first instinct … that’s our first reaction,” she said.

The department’s chief legal counsel, Annette Musolino, said she was confident the department’s disclosure of information was lawful. She said it was allowed under a section of the social security (administration) act, which allows for disclosures for the purpose of “social security law”.

The department has interpreted that to mean it can release information to maintain confidence in and integrity of the social security system. It says that allows the department to release information to correct the public record.

Campbell used her opening statement to the committee to defend the “robo debt” system.

She said almost half the cases of inaccurate debts reported publicly were not raised under the automated system. Campbell conceded that 6,600 initial letters sent out to welfare recipients went to old addresses. But Campbell said the department was now using registered mail.

[JBOMBER]

I suppose I take the view JBomber that CentreLink should not be responding to any newspaper report, especially one that has any personal information.

My reading of the Privacy Act is that they have closed the line. When I was a Shire Councillor, we often had ratepayers go to the Press with complaints about treatment by the Council. Often the details were wrong or important bits missing. We had a briefing by the Legal Guys that explained under the Act we could not mention any personal details. Maybe CentreLink does not fall under this Law, but I doubt it.

In any case, we are relying on newspaper report on what she said, and they have also been known to be selective in what they publish.

I would think that public confidence in the council & its councillors should be important & defending against false claims essential in maintaining that confidence. I agree you might start a never ending battle if you responded to every single criticism but in this case I think its perfectly clear this was a targeted attack on centrelink to use as a political tool. Centrelink need to defend such attacks or they, like the undefended attacks on EFC, simply become accepted truths.

[Alan_Noonan_10]

If any of us have had the misfortune of dealing with CentreLink, or their previous incarnations, then you know how soul destroying it can be.

It has been a long time since I had to visit their office, but I still recall the way the culture tries to shame everybody. I am sure that individuals working there are probably very nice people, but having to work in such a system seems to bring out the worst in people.

I know that some of those “customers” at CentreLink are very difficult people, but most if not all have big issues and just need help.

A recent UK film “I, Daniel Blake” covers a man’s battles with the UK version of Centrelink. Seems to match this view, except that the floor managers in that film are there to dissuade staff from showing compassion when they want to.

A knowledge of fluent Geordie is essential.

[Bacchusfox]

I suppose I take the view JBomber that CentreLink should not be responding to any newspaper report, especially one that has any personal information.

My reading of the Privacy Act is that they have closed the line. When I was a Shire Councillor, we often had ratepayers go to the Press with complaints about treatment by the Council. Often the details were wrong or important bits missing. We had a briefing by the Legal Guys that explained under the Act we could not mention any personal details. Maybe CentreLink does not fall under this Law, but I doubt it.

In any case, we are relying on newspaper report on what she said, and they have also been known to be selective in what they publish.

[JBOMBER]

Centrelink is an easy target for complaints but there are two sides to every story

Paul Malone

The ABC’s Q&A audience laughed at Attorney General George Brandis when he suggested last Monday that people with Centrelink problems could simply contact the agency and sort out the matter.

There are so many accounts of problems with Centrelink that Brandis’ view seemed like fantasyland.

Complainants range from ABC 7.30 Report presenter, Leigh Sales, to disability pensioners and victims of Centrelink’s debt recovery operations.

But could it be that sometimes the agency is being unfairly castigated?

One of the hardest hitting criticisms came from blogger and writer Andie Fox in an article published in Fairfax media outlets on February 6.

She says she tried calling Centrelink during her lunch hour but “I would end up wandering the streets around work with the phone pressed to my ear, on hold, and be no further advanced in the phone queue by the end of the hour.”

Advertisement

Eventually, she took a day off work to go into a Centrelink office.

But the media adviser for Human Services Minister Alan Tudge said that had she called the 1800 contact number on her debtor’s letter she would in all probability have gone straight through.

I tried this number and low and behold, I got an instant answer.

This is not to say that all Centrelink calls are answered quickly.

There are far too many complaints for that to be true.

But there are at least two sides to every story.

In her detailed article Ms Fox complained that her problem arose from the fact that she was chased by Centrelink for a debt actually owed by her former de facto partner.

She then detailed the run-around she got trying to resolve the matter.

She says she soon found out that even asking the simplest question about the debt threw her into “a vortex of humiliating and frustrating bureaucratic procedures.”

But Centrelink has a different story.

The agency says Ms Fox’s debt is a Family Tax Benefit (FTB) debt for the 2011-12 financial year which arose after she received more FTB than she was entitled to because she under-estimated her family income for that year.

The original debt was raised because she and her ex-partner did not lodge a tax return or confirm their income information for 2011-12.

Centrelink says that after Ms Fox notified the department that she had separated from her partner, the debt due to her partner’s non-lodgement was cancelled.

But what of other problems Ms Fox says she had in dealing with Centrelink?

“Once inside, you line up to receive a seat at a computer terminal from which you are expected to use the government website to solve your problems yourself. A single Centrelink employee marches the floor providing the occasional terse instruction to what resembles an absolute beginners’ tutorial in computer literacy.”

Ms Fox says there was no link on the website through which she could explain that she thought the debt Centrelink was chasing was her ex-partner’s fine for non-lodgement of tax returns.

There was no box in any window to select to explain that his failure to lodge his tax return was why the Family Tax Benefit she claimed was now seen by Centrelink as fraud.

Having gone as far as she could on the website, she pressed the Centrelink employee and asked to speak to someone directly.

She joined another queue. A different staff member saw her at a counter and, again, she relayed her story, shedding any dignity around discussing the details of her break-up and finances.

But Centrelink general manager Hank Jongen says Centrelink made numerous attempts to get in touch with Ms Fox via phone and letter but many of these attempts were left unanswered. Between November 16 and January 17 Centrelink made four phone calls and sent six letters to Ms Fox.

Centrelink says it was not until 2015 that she informed them that she had separated from her partner in 2013.

Mr Jongen said the experience described by Ms Fox could have been avoided if she had informed the department she had separated from her partner in a timely way, and if she had lodged her tax returns in a timely way.

The Department of Human Services maintains that overall wait times have been reduced this year and social security and welfare average-speed-of-answer is around 12 minutes.

But averages don’t help you if you happen to be inquiring at a time when wait times are over an hour.

More staff are needed, particularly during the peak month of July and from December to March each year when there is increased demand for help from families and students.

For years I’ve thought that, of the three broad public service tasks – policy development, service delivery and regulation – far too many staff were allocated to policy development and far too few to the other two areas.

Policy development is the high status activity, but service delivery and regulation are where people meet the service and rate its performance.

At the very least I believe policy development officers should spend some time every year working at the shop front. This should apply from the head of the Prime Minister’s Department, to Treasury and Finance Department budget officers.

Answering pensioners’ queries or fronting a Centrelink counter would not only help the service delivery officers, it would give the policy officers real insight into the role of government.

Time for trivialties

Currently senior officers can find time for trivial matters such as the Australian Public Service Commission’s Brandit competition.

For years the tagline One APS Career, thousands of opportunities has been attached to public service job advertisements.

I doubt if anyone paid attention to this jabber. It would be no loss if it disappeared.

But with nothing else to do, the commission has run a competition to find a new tagline to “convey the employment value proposition of the APS”.

The competition has, of course, included the full bureaucratic kit of judging criteria and judging panel.

Two external judges and the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Martin Parkinson and the Public Service commissioner, John Lloyd have found time to ponder the 32 shortlisted entries from over 700 “fantastic” submissions.I’d rather see them down at the local Centrelink helping members of the public.

Is that it? That’s all the personal info they released? They are basically just rebutting her story, she decided to make herself part of the story & all I can see centrelink doing is providing their side of the story. revealing why she was being fined, pointing out that she didn’t actually tell them she was separated & the fact that she didn’t lodge a tax return on time is hardly personal info that needs to be protected. they seem absolutely essential in centrelink providing clarity on the case. Again, she decided to make the case public & I see no reason why she shouldn’t have the attention focused back on her particularly if centrelink are correct & I’m more inclined to believe them.

Of course it is personal information. If she hasn’t divulged when she separated then it is not in the public domain.
They are not there the rebut her story in the public domain. They should be talking in examples not specifics.
They can say “we have evidence to the contrary” or something such as that, but to put her personal details in the public domain is actually against the legislation and very scary.

They could even say when a person separates and doesn’t advise for x amount of years such and such may occur. But here they have said this is what happened to her, here are her personal circumstances.

It is an appalling breach of privacy. And this an organisation that most people have no choice but to be a part of.
As I said before Centrelink has information on nearly everyone in Australia form the day they are born, or arrive here.

Of course your other point is “is that all the personal information they released” suggest you might think that a little bit of breach of privacy is OK? Sort of like a little bit of thieving or a little bit of murder?

None of it is OK

Nup -when she made the case public she made the details of the case open to public scrutiny. The date of her relationship ending is not personal information, its the critical information she intentionally left out which shows exactly why she was issued with the notice. Again, this is not centrelink simply choosing to release random information, this is them defending themselves & their reputation from an opportunist who deliberately misrepresented the facts of the case. Not only do I believe centrelink like every other organisation has the right to defend public attacks, I think its vitally important that public services like centrelink actively defend their reputations in the public interest. The public need to have a level of trust in these types of services & so criticisms of them need to be transparent. Like Wim’s case, people need to have confidence in public hospitals. That doesn’t mean that genuine issues should be supressed, but it does mean that hospitals should defend their reputations against false claims.

Just to add, yes some personal information used is ok as long as it relates to the claims made against centrelink. If they used personal information not related, simply to harm or discredit her, like say a tax liability she was late on 10 years ago or a previous relationship she was in, then that absolutely I believe that would be a breach & misuse of the information centrelink hold. If they released her address, contact details, her kids names, school they attend, their immunisation status etc then again this is not related to the fact she was misrepresenting a case against centrelink & its release to the public would be inappropriate.

[wimmera1]

Centrelink is an easy target for complaints but there are two sides to every story

Paul Malone

The ABC’s Q&A audience laughed at Attorney General George Brandis when he suggested last Monday that people with Centrelink problems could simply contact the agency and sort out the matter.

There are so many accounts of problems with Centrelink that Brandis’ view seemed like fantasyland.

Complainants range from ABC 7.30 Report presenter, Leigh Sales, to disability pensioners and victims of Centrelink’s debt recovery operations.

But could it be that sometimes the agency is being unfairly castigated?

One of the hardest hitting criticisms came from blogger and writer Andie Fox in an article published in Fairfax media outlets on February 6.

She says she tried calling Centrelink during her lunch hour but “I would end up wandering the streets around work with the phone pressed to my ear, on hold, and be no further advanced in the phone queue by the end of the hour.”

Advertisement

Eventually, she took a day off work to go into a Centrelink office.

But the media adviser for Human Services Minister Alan Tudge said that had she called the 1800 contact number on her debtor’s letter she would in all probability have gone straight through.

I tried this number and low and behold, I got an instant answer.

This is not to say that all Centrelink calls are answered quickly.

There are far too many complaints for that to be true.

But there are at least two sides to every story.

In her detailed article Ms Fox complained that her problem arose from the fact that she was chased by Centrelink for a debt actually owed by her former de facto partner.

She then detailed the run-around she got trying to resolve the matter.

She says she soon found out that even asking the simplest question about the debt threw her into “a vortex of humiliating and frustrating bureaucratic procedures.”

But Centrelink has a different story.

The agency says Ms Fox’s debt is a Family Tax Benefit (FTB) debt for the 2011-12 financial year which arose after she received more FTB than she was entitled to because she under-estimated her family income for that year.

The original debt was raised because she and her ex-partner did not lodge a tax return or confirm their income information for 2011-12.

Centrelink says that after Ms Fox notified the department that she had separated from her partner, the debt due to her partner’s non-lodgement was cancelled.

But what of other problems Ms Fox says she had in dealing with Centrelink?

“Once inside, you line up to receive a seat at a computer terminal from which you are expected to use the government website to solve your problems yourself. A single Centrelink employee marches the floor providing the occasional terse instruction to what resembles an absolute beginners’ tutorial in computer literacy.”

Ms Fox says there was no link on the website through which she could explain that she thought the debt Centrelink was chasing was her ex-partner’s fine for non-lodgement of tax returns.

There was no box in any window to select to explain that his failure to lodge his tax return was why the Family Tax Benefit she claimed was now seen by Centrelink as fraud.

Having gone as far as she could on the website, she pressed the Centrelink employee and asked to speak to someone directly.

She joined another queue. A different staff member saw her at a counter and, again, she relayed her story, shedding any dignity around discussing the details of her break-up and finances.

But Centrelink general manager Hank Jongen says Centrelink made numerous attempts to get in touch with Ms Fox via phone and letter but many of these attempts were left unanswered. Between November 16 and January 17 Centrelink made four phone calls and sent six letters to Ms Fox.

Centrelink says it was not until 2015 that she informed them that she had separated from her partner in 2013.

Mr Jongen said the experience described by Ms Fox could have been avoided if she had informed the department she had separated from her partner in a timely way, and if she had lodged her tax returns in a timely way.

The Department of Human Services maintains that overall wait times have been reduced this year and social security and welfare average-speed-of-answer is around 12 minutes.

But averages don’t help you if you happen to be inquiring at a time when wait times are over an hour.

More staff are needed, particularly during the peak month of July and from December to March each year when there is increased demand for help from families and students.

For years I’ve thought that, of the three broad public service tasks – policy development, service delivery and regulation – far too many staff were allocated to policy development and far too few to the other two areas.

Policy development is the high status activity, but service delivery and regulation are where people meet the service and rate its performance.

At the very least I believe policy development officers should spend some time every year working at the shop front. This should apply from the head of the Prime Minister’s Department, to Treasury and Finance Department budget officers.

Answering pensioners’ queries or fronting a Centrelink counter would not only help the service delivery officers, it would give the policy officers real insight into the role of government.

Time for trivialties

Currently senior officers can find time for trivial matters such as the Australian Public Service Commission’s Brandit competition.

For years the tagline One APS Career, thousands of opportunities has been attached to public service job advertisements.

I doubt if anyone paid attention to this jabber. It would be no loss if it disappeared.

But with nothing else to do, the commission has run a competition to find a new tagline to “convey the employment value proposition of the APS”.

The competition has, of course, included the full bureaucratic kit of judging criteria and judging panel.

Two external judges and the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Martin Parkinson and the Public Service commissioner, John Lloyd have found time to ponder the 32 shortlisted entries from over 700 “fantastic” submissions.I’d rather see them down at the local Centrelink helping members of the public.

Is that it? That’s all the personal info they released? They are basically just rebutting her story, she decided to make herself part of the story & all I can see centrelink doing is providing their side of the story. revealing why she was being fined, pointing out that she didn’t actually tell them she was separated & the fact that she didn’t lodge a tax return on time is hardly personal info that needs to be protected. they seem absolutely essential in centrelink providing clarity on the case. Again, she decided to make the case public & I see no reason why she shouldn’t have the attention focused back on her particularly if centrelink are correct & I’m more inclined to believe them.

Of course it is personal information. If she hasn’t divulged when she separated then it is not in the public domain.
They are not there the rebut her story in the public domain. They should be talking in examples not specifics.
They can say “we have evidence to the contrary” or something such as that, but to put her personal details in the public domain is actually against the legislation and very scary.

They could even say when a person separates and doesn’t advise for x amount of years such and such may occur. But here they have said this is what happened to her, here are her personal circumstances.

It is an appalling breach of privacy. And this an organisation that most people have no choice but to be a part of.
As I said before Centrelink has information on nearly everyone in Australia form the day they are born, or arrive here.

Of course your other point is “is that all the personal information they released” suggest you might think that a little bit of breach of privacy is OK? Sort of like a little bit of thieving or a little bit of murder?

None of it is OK

I think it’s perfectly okay.
And it’s nothing like thieving or murder.
This person has made her issue public and given a false impression by leaving out the bits she didn’t need.
The issue was addressed publicly.
Absolutely no problem with it at all.

edit: And as to whether they can, quite apart from the fact they already have and wouldn’t have done so without Government authorisation, I’ve already told you it happens.
I’ve seen it.
In exactly these circumstances.
Not just whenever they feel like it.
I agreed with it then, and I agree with it now.

[Bacchusfox]

If any of us have had the misfortune of dealing with CentreLink, or their previous incarnations, then you know how soul destroying it can be.

It has been a long time since I had to visit their office, but I still recall the way the culture tries to shame everybody. I am sure that individuals working there are probably very nice people, but having to work in such a system seems to bring out the worst in people.

I know that some of those “customers” at CentreLink are very difficult people, but most if not all have big issues and just need help.

[Scorpio]

Centrelink is an easy target for complaints but there are two sides to every story

Paul Malone

The ABC’s Q&A audience laughed at Attorney General George Brandis when he suggested last Monday that people with Centrelink problems could simply contact the agency and sort out the matter.

There are so many accounts of problems with Centrelink that Brandis’ view seemed like fantasyland.

Complainants range from ABC 7.30 Report presenter, Leigh Sales, to disability pensioners and victims of Centrelink’s debt recovery operations.

But could it be that sometimes the agency is being unfairly castigated?

One of the hardest hitting criticisms came from blogger and writer Andie Fox in an article published in Fairfax media outlets on February 6.

She says she tried calling Centrelink during her lunch hour but “I would end up wandering the streets around work with the phone pressed to my ear, on hold, and be no further advanced in the phone queue by the end of the hour.”

Advertisement

Eventually, she took a day off work to go into a Centrelink office.

But the media adviser for Human Services Minister Alan Tudge said that had she called the 1800 contact number on her debtor’s letter she would in all probability have gone straight through.

I tried this number and low and behold, I got an instant answer.

This is not to say that all Centrelink calls are answered quickly.

There are far too many complaints for that to be true.

But there are at least two sides to every story.

In her detailed article Ms Fox complained that her problem arose from the fact that she was chased by Centrelink for a debt actually owed by her former de facto partner.

She then detailed the run-around she got trying to resolve the matter.

She says she soon found out that even asking the simplest question about the debt threw her into “a vortex of humiliating and frustrating bureaucratic procedures.”

But Centrelink has a different story.

The agency says Ms Fox’s debt is a Family Tax Benefit (FTB) debt for the 2011-12 financial year which arose after she received more FTB than she was entitled to because she under-estimated her family income for that year.

The original debt was raised because she and her ex-partner did not lodge a tax return or confirm their income information for 2011-12.

Centrelink says that after Ms Fox notified the department that she had separated from her partner, the debt due to her partner’s non-lodgement was cancelled.

But what of other problems Ms Fox says she had in dealing with Centrelink?

“Once inside, you line up to receive a seat at a computer terminal from which you are expected to use the government website to solve your problems yourself. A single Centrelink employee marches the floor providing the occasional terse instruction to what resembles an absolute beginners’ tutorial in computer literacy.”

Ms Fox says there was no link on the website through which she could explain that she thought the debt Centrelink was chasing was her ex-partner’s fine for non-lodgement of tax returns.

There was no box in any window to select to explain that his failure to lodge his tax return was why the Family Tax Benefit she claimed was now seen by Centrelink as fraud.

Having gone as far as she could on the website, she pressed the Centrelink employee and asked to speak to someone directly.

She joined another queue. A different staff member saw her at a counter and, again, she relayed her story, shedding any dignity around discussing the details of her break-up and finances.

But Centrelink general manager Hank Jongen says Centrelink made numerous attempts to get in touch with Ms Fox via phone and letter but many of these attempts were left unanswered. Between November 16 and January 17 Centrelink made four phone calls and sent six letters to Ms Fox.

Centrelink says it was not until 2015 that she informed them that she had separated from her partner in 2013.

Mr Jongen said the experience described by Ms Fox could have been avoided if she had informed the department she had separated from her partner in a timely way, and if she had lodged her tax returns in a timely way.

The Department of Human Services maintains that overall wait times have been reduced this year and social security and welfare average-speed-of-answer is around 12 minutes.

But averages don’t help you if you happen to be inquiring at a time when wait times are over an hour.

More staff are needed, particularly during the peak month of July and from December to March each year when there is increased demand for help from families and students.

For years I’ve thought that, of the three broad public service tasks – policy development, service delivery and regulation – far too many staff were allocated to policy development and far too few to the other two areas.

Policy development is the high status activity, but service delivery and regulation are where people meet the service and rate its performance.

At the very least I believe policy development officers should spend some time every year working at the shop front. This should apply from the head of the Prime Minister’s Department, to Treasury and Finance Department budget officers.

Answering pensioners’ queries or fronting a Centrelink counter would not only help the service delivery officers, it would give the policy officers real insight into the role of government.

Time for trivialties

Currently senior officers can find time for trivial matters such as the Australian Public Service Commission’s Brandit competition.

For years the tagline One APS Career, thousands of opportunities has been attached to public service job advertisements.

I doubt if anyone paid attention to this jabber. It would be no loss if it disappeared.

But with nothing else to do, the commission has run a competition to find a new tagline to “convey the employment value proposition of the APS”.

The competition has, of course, included the full bureaucratic kit of judging criteria and judging panel.

Two external judges and the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Martin Parkinson and the Public Service commissioner, John Lloyd have found time to ponder the 32 shortlisted entries from over 700 “fantastic” submissions.I’d rather see them down at the local Centrelink helping members of the public.

Is that it? That’s all the personal info they released? They are basically just rebutting her story, she decided to make herself part of the story & all I can see centrelink doing is providing their side of the story. revealing why she was being fined, pointing out that she didn’t actually tell them she was separated & the fact that she didn’t lodge a tax return on time is hardly personal info that needs to be protected. they seem absolutely essential in centrelink providing clarity on the case. Again, she decided to make the case public & I see no reason why she shouldn’t have the attention focused back on her particularly if centrelink are correct & I’m more inclined to believe them.

Of course it is personal information. If she hasn’t divulged when she separated then it is not in the public domain.
They are not there the rebut her story in the public domain. They should be talking in examples not specifics.
They can say “we have evidence to the contrary” or something such as that, but to put her personal details in the public domain is actually against the legislation and very scary.

They could even say when a person separates and doesn’t advise for x amount of years such and such may occur. But here they have said this is what happened to her, here are her personal circumstances.

It is an appalling breach of privacy. And this an organisation that most people have no choice but to be a part of.
As I said before Centrelink has information on nearly everyone in Australia form the day they are born, or arrive here.

Of course your other point is “is that all the personal information they released” suggest you might think that a little bit of breach of privacy is OK? Sort of like a little bit of thieving or a little bit of murder?

None of it is OK

[JBOMBER]

Centrelink is an easy target for complaints but there are two sides to every story

Paul Malone

The ABC’s Q&A audience laughed at Attorney General George Brandis when he suggested last Monday that people with Centrelink problems could simply contact the agency and sort out the matter.

There are so many accounts of problems with Centrelink that Brandis’ view seemed like fantasyland.

Complainants range from ABC 7.30 Report presenter, Leigh Sales, to disability pensioners and victims of Centrelink’s debt recovery operations.

But could it be that sometimes the agency is being unfairly castigated?

One of the hardest hitting criticisms came from blogger and writer Andie Fox in an article published in Fairfax media outlets on February 6.

She says she tried calling Centrelink during her lunch hour but “I would end up wandering the streets around work with the phone pressed to my ear, on hold, and be no further advanced in the phone queue by the end of the hour.”

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Eventually, she took a day off work to go into a Centrelink office.

But the media adviser for Human Services Minister Alan Tudge said that had she called the 1800 contact number on her debtor’s letter she would in all probability have gone straight through.

I tried this number and low and behold, I got an instant answer.

This is not to say that all Centrelink calls are answered quickly.

There are far too many complaints for that to be true.

But there are at least two sides to every story.

In her detailed article Ms Fox complained that her problem arose from the fact that she was chased by Centrelink for a debt actually owed by her former de facto partner.

She then detailed the run-around she got trying to resolve the matter.

She says she soon found out that even asking the simplest question about the debt threw her into “a vortex of humiliating and frustrating bureaucratic procedures.”

But Centrelink has a different story.

The agency says Ms Fox’s debt is a Family Tax Benefit (FTB) debt for the 2011-12 financial year which arose after she received more FTB than she was entitled to because she under-estimated her family income for that year.

The original debt was raised because she and her ex-partner did not lodge a tax return or confirm their income information for 2011-12.

Centrelink says that after Ms Fox notified the department that she had separated from her partner, the debt due to her partner’s non-lodgement was cancelled.

But what of other problems Ms Fox says she had in dealing with Centrelink?

“Once inside, you line up to receive a seat at a computer terminal from which you are expected to use the government website to solve your problems yourself. A single Centrelink employee marches the floor providing the occasional terse instruction to what resembles an absolute beginners’ tutorial in computer literacy.”

Ms Fox says there was no link on the website through which she could explain that she thought the debt Centrelink was chasing was her ex-partner’s fine for non-lodgement of tax returns.

There was no box in any window to select to explain that his failure to lodge his tax return was why the Family Tax Benefit she claimed was now seen by Centrelink as fraud.

Having gone as far as she could on the website, she pressed the Centrelink employee and asked to speak to someone directly.

She joined another queue. A different staff member saw her at a counter and, again, she relayed her story, shedding any dignity around discussing the details of her break-up and finances.

But Centrelink general manager Hank Jongen says Centrelink made numerous attempts to get in touch with Ms Fox via phone and letter but many of these attempts were left unanswered. Between November 16 and January 17 Centrelink made four phone calls and sent six letters to Ms Fox.

Centrelink says it was not until 2015 that she informed them that she had separated from her partner in 2013.

Mr Jongen said the experience described by Ms Fox could have been avoided if she had informed the department she had separated from her partner in a timely way, and if she had lodged her tax returns in a timely way.

The Department of Human Services maintains that overall wait times have been reduced this year and social security and welfare average-speed-of-answer is around 12 minutes.

But averages don’t help you if you happen to be inquiring at a time when wait times are over an hour.

More staff are needed, particularly during the peak month of July and from December to March each year when there is increased demand for help from families and students.

For years I’ve thought that, of the three broad public service tasks – policy development, service delivery and regulation – far too many staff were allocated to policy development and far too few to the other two areas.

Policy development is the high status activity, but service delivery and regulation are where people meet the service and rate its performance.

At the very least I believe policy development officers should spend some time every year working at the shop front. This should apply from the head of the Prime Minister’s Department, to Treasury and Finance Department budget officers.

Answering pensioners’ queries or fronting a Centrelink counter would not only help the service delivery officers, it would give the policy officers real insight into the role of government.

Time for trivialties

Currently senior officers can find time for trivial matters such as the Australian Public Service Commission’s Brandit competition.

For years the tagline One APS Career, thousands of opportunities has been attached to public service job advertisements.

I doubt if anyone paid attention to this jabber. It would be no loss if it disappeared.

But with nothing else to do, the commission has run a competition to find a new tagline to “convey the employment value proposition of the APS”.

The competition has, of course, included the full bureaucratic kit of judging criteria and judging panel.

Two external judges and the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Martin Parkinson and the Public Service commissioner, John Lloyd have found time to ponder the 32 shortlisted entries from over 700 “fantastic” submissions.I’d rather see them down at the local Centrelink helping members of the public.

Is that it? That’s all the personal info they released? They are basically just rebutting her story, she decided to make herself part of the story & all I can see centrelink doing is providing their side of the story. revealing why she was being fined, pointing out that she didn’t actually tell them she was separated & the fact that she didn’t lodge a tax return on time is hardly personal info that needs to be protected. they seem absolutely essential in centrelink providing clarity on the case. Again, she decided to make the case public & I see no reason why she shouldn’t have the attention focused back on her particularly if centrelink are correct & I’m more inclined to believe them.

[Essendon12]

Blogger’s have lunch hours now?

[gillsy]

I doubt many bloggers blog full time and have day jobs.

[yaco55]

Once I read the Minister’s offer mistakenly released the information that is code for deliberately released the information.

It’s disturbing that anyone can support a Government Department releasing private information to the media.

[Reboot]

Coalition’s ‘laser-like focus’ only sees what it wants to see

Lenore Taylor

Imagine the schools and hospitals that could be built with the $28bn from 15 years of infrastructure cost overruns

Scott Morrison likes to tells us about the government’s “laser-like focus” on getting spending under control and “repairing” the federal budget.

That’s why he is trying to force the parliament to swallow recooked versions of Tony Abbott’s welfare cuts, three years after they were tabled. It’s apparently the only way we can afford the Coalition’s childcare plans and possibly also decent services for the disabled and their carers under the national disability insurance scheme, although that linkage seems to come and go depending on political tactics.

It’s also why the government deems it necessary to push Centrelink debt recovery to the point where professional debt collectors are pursuing citizens for the tiniest amounts owed due to mistakes in calculating their entitlements, or for sums they don’t even owe.

But when misdirected or excessive spending is due to the government’s own mistakes, or to ill-conceived policy, that searing “laser-like focus” suddenly goes all soft and blurry.

Take the release of a report by the Australian National University Centre for Water Economics this week, with the startling finding that the $5.3bn spent since 2001 on trying to reduce the amount of water extracted from the Murray-Darling basin and environmental flows had achieved almost nothing.

That’s $5.3 BILLION dollars – more than the proposed welfare savings, enough to pay for the NDIS “shortfall” – that, according to the centre’s director, Prof. Quentin Grafton, has been spent with “no discernible impact”.

For a number of complex reasons, including where we drew the starting line for the efforts to return water to the crucial river system, and the way water entitlements operate, we discover that despite all that money and all that effort and all those studies, and all that shouting and burning of expert reports in the streets of country towns, we are in fact not taking less water from the river system. Which was, of course, supposed to be the point of it all.

One would expect that the politicians who oversaw those 10 years of apparently failed policy-making, which included both Labor and Liberal governments, would heed Grafton’s advice to urgently “stop what we’re doing” and conduct a proper review or audit. At the very least one would expect they would want to know how Grafton and his colleagues reached their damning conclusion. Especially since there may be an El Niño on the way, and a likely return to the dry or drought conditions that can devastate river ecosystems and the townships that rely on them.

But on Friday Grafton told me he has had no calls. “No one has responded from any political party, no calls, no emails, no one has got in touch in any way.”

A tiny alleged overpayment from Centrelink and we call in the professional debt collectors, but the possible squandering of $5bn in taxpayers money? Not a peep.

And then there was the recent report from the Australian National Audit Office about $3.5bn in federal government grants and concessional loans to Sydney’s controversial WestConnex road. It found the Abbott government’s $2bn concessional loan to the project (which the audit office says will end up imposing a net cost on taxpayers of at least $640m) did not “fast-track” the road – as the federal and state governments so excitedly promised – and was most likely not even necessary.

The Abbott government also gave the project $500m of its promised $1.5bn in grant funding long before it was actually needed, which imposed an extra $20m in cost on the commonwealth, and both the Coalition and federal Labor made initial commitments to fund the project in 2013 (that was, you may remember, an election year) before any business case for the project was finalised, although Labor insists its promise was contingent on a plan being finalised.

It’s the latest example of the pattern identified in last year’s Grattan Institute report, which found that much of the $28bn in cost overruns on federal and state infrastructure projects over the past 15 years could have been avoided if planning processes had been a little less reckless and politicians had refrained from promising projects before they had been subject to proper cost-benefit analysis, including in the run-up to elections. Imagine the schools and hospitals and disability services that could be paid for with $28bn.

The federal government did respond to the latest WestConnex report – but not in the way one might have anticipated given that “laser focus” on budget repair and getting the most from every taxpayer dollar.

No, the major projects minister, Paul Fletcher, insisted the report had made “no criticism of the project”, a conclusion he reached because the auditor did not criticise the road’s design and construction, being confined as he was to what Fletcher described as the “very specific and limited focus” of “the approval and administration of commonwealth funding”. Specific and limited, and – you might argue – very relevant.

Fletcher was keen to talk about “Labor’s hypocrisy on WestConnex” but not so much about the finding that the way the funding was handled had “not adequately protected the Australian government’s financial interests”.

But it all passed with barely a mention because this week the politicians were choosing to fight about penalty rates – who instigated a review and who did or did not support its fundings. The furore over the competing interests of the environment and Murray Darling farm communities was last year’s news, the controversies over proper process for massive infrastructure spending were not in the headlines and so could be batted away with a few quick lines in a press statement. Nowhere was there evidence of any focus – laser-like or otherwise – on serious suggestions of massive waste of public money.

There was one other Audit Office report this week, which is the perfect final stop for this brief tour of the somewhat selective nature of the government’s efforts on budget repair and efficient spending.

The report on the management of some fraud and compliance procedures did not look at the most recent and controversial system of automated data matching that is causing so much pain and anxiety, but it did find that precursor efforts to glean savings from the welfare budget had been ineffective.

Do we really need to ask why voters are utterly fed up with politics?

[werewolf]

What a load of unsubstantiated tripe. Seriously so every centerlink over payment is just a genuine accident? Yeah so let’s not bother to follow up on it.

Imagine if we took that approach with all crime. It’d be great as we’d save so much money in not needing jails. Doh!

Not disagreeing for a nanosecond that our governments waste money BTW.

Is it any wonder people are utterly fed up with so called journalists?

[Polydeukes]

Why not be fed up with both?

[wimmera1]

Leaving aside the morality of robodebt for a moment, does anyone know how it actually works?
I mean, has the debt been sold?
Or have they just contracted debt collectors to work as…independent consultants?
Because they still seem to be using Centrelink manpower and data.
I’m just wondering about the cost-effectiveness. And whether the money is coming in…slowly or all at once.