Tweet of the Week

Some parodies just beg to be written ...others sorta demand like a terrorist 🤣 a few minutes ago it was "oh come ON you know you wanna....i deserves it!..go on i DARE ya....write me and tweet it..." so being a softie i gave in. "Workin for the man...oops i mean dole" 🙄 pic.twitter.com/7XSZgCAAuc

— Glenno and Ruben (@mad6duck) September 23, 2023

There were more income averaging schemes than just Robodebt robbing welfare recipients and the rot appears to have started under Prime Minister John Howard, Minister Amanda Vanstone & Department Secretary Mark Sullivan

 

In March 1996, by virtue of being Parliamentary Leader of the Liberal Party, John Winston Howard became Prime Minister of Australia. In January 2021 Howard made Senator Amanda Vanstone Minster for Family and Community Services, while he appointed Mark Sullivan as Secretary of the Family and Community Services in January 2002.

It would appear that sometime in the seven years between the start of1996 and the end of 2002, a virulent political, policy and bureaucratic rot began to to grow…..

In July 2002 the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) had introduced changes to quality control and quality assurance processes and had in place

comprehensive Centrelink processes to ensure

Quality control, service profiling, national validations.

• Awareness: newsletter, regular reviews, debt prevention strategy, life events products

• Deterrence measures: regular reviews, prosecutions, warning letters, raising and recovering debts

• Compliance initiatives: Accelerated Claimant Matching (ACM), ACM Rent Assistance, ATO tip-offs, Data-Matching Program [ATO, Australian Valuation Office (AVO) & Centrelink], Corrective Services Matching, DIMIA matching, Registrar-General’s Office death matching, Defence Housing matching, Com Super matching, ATO investment property matching, TDF matching, Tip-offs, T&Cs (ATO & ASIC matching), ID fraud detection, Optical surveillance, outposted Australian Federal Police agents, inter-agency Cash Economy Field Teams.

The Department of Family and Community Services, Annual Report 2002–03 Volume I & 2, (pp.14,16, 77, 216) revealed how this rot began to be seen as healthy:

[my yellow highlights throughout this post]

“There was a $162.1 million decrease in the write down of assets, primarily the result of a decrease in the provision for doubtful debts for the Student Financial Supplement Scheme ($386.6 million). This was offset by an increase in the provision for doubtful debts for other personal benefits ($224.5 million) due to a change in methodology for calculating the provision for doubtful debts.”…..

“To tackle the upward debt trend, we developed a national collection strategy that is already making an impact on collections and stemming debt growth. This ensures more parents support their children according to their capacity to do so. The strategy also provides a basis for implementing the 2003-04 Budget measures to target recalcitrant debt.”….

“Service profiling was introduced gradually in 2002–03.”

“Other methods to identify possible incorrect payments include:….

• risk-based review selections generated from statistical analysis of client characteristics

• duration reviews that examine client entitlements at specific intervals from payment commencement”

“Centrelink has contracted mercantile agents to recover some client debts when the debtor’s whereabouts are unknown or when pursuit of the debts through standard debt recovery processes is not cost effective.”

By February 2023 it had become clear that Services Australia and the Department of Social Services had been withholding information from the Commonwealth Ombudsman and possibly from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme.

According to Rick Morton writing in The Saturday Paper on 12 August 2023:

Centrelink used the same bad mathematics as the illegal robo-debt scheme to raise debts estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars from more than 100,000 welfare recipients – some of whom have faced prosecution.

The revelation shatters any illusion that defective administration was contained to a single program. If all inaccurate debts are ever found, the cost to fix the mess could top $1 billion…..

Services Australia chose not to tell the Commonwealth ombudsman in early 2021, when the ombudsman raised individual cases of inaccurate debts with the department. The integrity agency was only briefed on the issue in February this year, at which time it launched an own motion investigation into the matter.

At the start of this month, the Commonwealth ombudsman published a report titled “Lessons in Lawfulness” about this debt calculation technique, known as “income apportionment”, which Centrelink used for almost two decades until December 7, 2020, to effectively fit the reported income of welfare recipients into the rigid eligibility fortnights defined under the legislation.

“The agencies are still determining how much the known and potential debts are affected – that is, how much payment rates went up or down because of unlawful or inaccurate income apportionment calculations,” the report says.

“It is unknown how many other customers may have been impacted by unlawful or inaccurate debts or underpayments.”

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions told The Saturday Paper that Services Australia had “identified prosecutions before the courts affected by income apportionment which may affect the amount of financial advantage alleged”.

“At this stage, the CDPP is considering the circumstances of each prosecution with a view to allowing the income apportionment issue to be addressed,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “The CDPP has taken or is taking steps in relation to these matters to ensure these defendants/courts are advised. As a result a number of matters have been adjourned.”

What will happen to the historic cases dating back to 2003 is unclear.

Prosecutions are just the pointy end of the compliance system, however. The vast majority of Centrelink clients affected were simply slapped with a debt.

Scholars such as the University of Sydney’s health and welfare law lecturer, Dr Chris Rudge, as well as insiders who have spoken with The Saturday Paper, suggest the number of people affected could be higher than 500,000.

The bureaucrats “never worked out how to make a mathematical… a lawful mathematical approach”, Rudge says.

Centrelink could have changed the legislation to allow its accounting practice, he says, but this did not happen. “If the law had said you can just do it across different periods, then this wouldn’t have happened.”

At issue is an obscure provision of the Social Security Act, section 1073B, which purports to give officials the power to take the self-reported earnings of a benefit recipient and squeeze it into a Centrelink fortnight by dividing the lump sum income by 14 days. The practice is called “income apportioning”. It was considered necessary because the reporting periods did not neatly match the Centrelink assessment fortnights, and often overlapped. However, the section of the social security law immediately following is clear that this method can only be used within a single fortnight.

“In training they actively told us to never ever go to the legislation. Because they thought – and frankly they would be right – that the level of staff member that did that sort of work would not be able to accurately interpret it.”

The use of income apportioning to assess eligibility for welfare payments is discrete from robo-debt, which was a specific program of debt-hunting using annual tax office data, and created illegally in 2015 when it received cabinet approval. Under this administrative practice, bureaucrats used payment amounts accumulated over, for example, several months’ work, and attempted to fit them into fortnightly blocks. However, it is the same mathematical concept – averaging – that was deployed under the robo-debt scheme. Neither had a legislative basis. The earnings apportionment tool used by Centrelink employees actually did this averaging automatically. Robo-debt used the same tool, but with annual data, and with a deliberate strategy to raise debt.

Centrelink public servants were using the dodgy mathematics to uniformly populate successive assessment fortnights which, had a person been receiving benefit payments, could have retrospectively rendered them ineligible for those payments, creating a debt.

“It’s so artificial,” Rudge says. “If it goes beyond one entitlement period, it’s unlawful.”

As a former debt team worker tells this newspaper, cultural problems at the agencies meant these assumptions were never tested.

“In training they actively told us to never ever go to the legislation,” the source says. “Because they thought – and frankly they would be right – that the level of staff member that did that sort of work would not be able to accurately interpret it.

“Their view was go to the operational blueprint because we’ve got this wonderful team of people that are always reviewing the legislation and AAT [Administrative Appeals Tribunal] decisions and making sure it’s adjusted so it’s always right.

“In hindsight, that wasn’t correct.”

The robo-debt royal commission uncovered a political and administrative conspiracy spanning six years in which the debt-raising scheme was conceived, delivered and continued despite legal advice from the beginning that stated it was against the law.

Despite robo-debt’s effective end, in late 2019, and the use of income apportionment to determine payment rates being aborted in December the following year, it is clear sections of the vast social security bureaucracy either did not know what they were permitted to do, did not seek to find out or, worse, knew and continued anyway.

In the course of normal business, Centrelink has raised almost $12 billion in debts from mid-2018 to March this year, and waived $180 million of that due to “administrative error”. Income apportionment, which goes beyond simple error, dates back “at least” to 2003, according to the ombudsman…..

When Senator Patrick first raised individual cases related to the use of income apportionment, he spoke with two key figures found to have been intimately involved in robo-debt: Kathryn Campbell and former DHS chief counsel and chief operating officer Annette Musolino.

Campbell, then secretary of Social Services, said there had been “challenges” in administering the social security system because of a timing issue: whether income was assessed at the time it was earned or at the time it was received. She flagged the December legislation change as a way to end this impasse.

The cases Patrick’s staffers had been chaperoning through internal review, the AAT, senate estimates and finally put in writing to the then Social Services minister Anne Ruston in the Coalition government were all significant. There were 15 cases with an average debt of $3853.

Campbell’s explanation – that there were challenges in administering the scheme – failed to take account of the fact it was a policy choice made by bureaucrats to use the date income was earned as the trigger for benefit assessment, rather than when it was paid or received. They believed other approaches would create an inequity: some people could defer payments, rendering them eligible for social security benefits in fortnights where they would otherwise have been ineligible.

In doing so, senior bureaucrats read the law wrongly, for two decades.

When the legislation was changed in December 2020, the bills digest gave a hint of the scale of “overpayments” that would otherwise go on to become debts.

“The changes … are expected to provide savings of $2.1 billion over five years from 2018-19. The savings will be derived from reduced overpayments arising from inaccurate income reporting.”….

Although the Commonwealth ombudsman notes there is “an unresolved and significant difference of opinion between some of the legal advices”, its investigation statement leaves no room for interpretation.

“Our investigation found Services Australia and its predecessor the Department of Human Services had been spreading employment income evenly over two or more Centrelink instalment periods (Centrelink fortnights), in circumstances where this was not permitted by social security law,” the ombudsman says.

“This approach, known as ‘income apportionment’, could result in customers’ employment income being assessed in the wrong Centrelink fortnight, which could in turn result in their fortnightly Centrelink payment being over- or under-paid.”

A former Centrelink employee says the ombudsman’s certainty on unlawfulness and the competing legal interpretations of the departmental advice suggests the disagreement is not over the legality of using income apportionment but how to remedy a roughly two-decade overreach…..

“Once the legal issues are resolved, the Secretary of DSS will finalise a remediation strategy for historic cases and the General Instructions will be refreshed, as required, to reflect this strategy. We acknowledge this has taken longer than we would have wanted but we are determined to get it right.”

These general instructions were created by DSS to guide Services Australia in “how to process and review potential debts … which were potentially miscalculated due to unlawful application of income apportionment provisions”.

The ombudsman says they contain a glaring omission.

“General Instructions represent the policy position for how to calculate income apportionment debt-raising processes,” it says. “Currently, they do not cover any potential underpayments which may have been caused by income apportionment practices.”

These same instructions suggest the DSS secretary will only review historical decisions where a person requests a review and it is “not expected that the Secretary will initiate administrative reviews of historical debt decisions”.

The ombudsman disagrees.

“We consider the position adopted by DSS and Services Australia in the General Instructions is not appropriate,” the report says. “This is inconsistent with the principle of discretionary power and may lead to unfair outcomes for customers.”…..

Centrelink public servants were using the dodgy mathematics to uniformly populate successive assessment fortnights which, had a person been receiving benefit payments, could have retrospectively rendered them ineligible for those payments, creating a debt.

“It’s so artificial,” Rudge says. “If it goes beyond one entitlement period, it’s unlawful.”

As a former debt team worker tells this newspaper, cultural problems at the agencies meant these assumptions were never tested.

“In training they actively told us to never ever go to the legislation,” the source says. “Because they thought – and frankly they would be right – that the level of staff member that did that sort of work would not be able to accurately interpret it.

“Their view was go to the operational blueprint because we’ve got this wonderful team of people that are always reviewing the legislation and AAT [Administrative Appeals Tribunal] decisions and making sure it’s adjusted so it’s always right.

“In hindsight, that wasn’t correct.”….

BACKGROUND

Lessons in lawfulness: Own motion investigation into Services Australia’s and the Department of Social Services’ response to the question of the lawfulness of income apportionment before 7 December 2020, 1 August 2023, excerpts.

Highlights, p.1:

[my yellow highlights throughout this post]

WHY DID WE INVESTIGATE?

In February 2023, Services Australia and the Department of Social Services (DSS) told our Office

there was an issue with how Services Australia had been apportioning income to calculate social

security payment rates before 7 December 2020, when the law changed.

• ‘Income apportionment’ is different to ‘income averaging’ that was at the heart of Robodebt.

• The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) sent some debts back to Services Australia to be

recalculated. This raised concerns about whether income had been lawfully calculated.

• Services Australia advised it paused approximately 13,000 debt reviews while the agencies sought

legal advice. Another 87,000 files which may become debts were also potentially affected by

unlawful or incorrect income apportionment calculations.

• Given the scale, significance and potential impact, the Ombudsman decided to conduct two

investigations into income apportionment:

Investigation 1 – lawfulness of the    agencies approach to income apportionment.

Investigation 2 – examining the agencies’  administration of income apportionment  decisions, communication with customers, and  handling of complaints, internal reviews and AAT  or Federal Court appeals.

• This statement relates to Investigation 1. Investigation 2 is ongoing.

WHAT DID WE FIND?

• Since at least 2003, Services Australia (and its precursor the Department of Human Services), was

unlawfully apportioning customers’ income across two or more Centrelink instalment periods. This

in turn likely affected social security payment rates and may have lead to unfair debts against

customers.

• Since becoming aware of the issue in October 2020, the agencies took steps to seek legal advice,

but could have acted quicker to finalise advice.

• There is an unresolved and significant difference of opinion between some of the legal advices.

• The General Instructions that DSS developed to guide how decision-makers should recalculate the

approximately 100,000 actual and potential debts need further development.

• The agencies could have acted quicker to inform us of this issue, particularly since Services

Australia knew our Office had investigated some of the affected complaints.

• The agencies are still determining how much the known and potential debts are affected – that is,

how much payment rates went up or down because of unlawful or inaccurate income

apportionment calculations. It is unknown how many other customers may have been impacted

by unlawful or inaccurate debts or underpayments.

Background to the investigation, p.2:

On 29 October 2020, at Senate Estimates, then-Senator Rex Patrick raised concerns with Services

Australia about the lawfulness of its approach to apportioning income when calculating Centrelink

payment rates. The Guardian Australia reported on the Senator’s questions and AAT reviews of

debts in November 20201 and March 20212, respectively.

In February 2021, the AAT made two decisions requiring Services Australia to recalculate debts that

related to income apportionment. The AAT identified issues in how Services Australia was applying

section 1073B of the Social Security Act 1991 (the Social Security Act) to apportion income. Section

1073B was in force between 2003 and 7 December 2020.

Around March 2021, the Office began receiving complaints about delays in Services Australia

reviews. Between then and January 2023, we investigated or made preliminary inquiries about these

individual complaints. Services Australia did not inform us, as part of these investigations, that these

review delays were affected by this underlying legal issue.

In January 2023, Services Australia approached the Office to offer a briefing on income apportionment. At that briefing, on 17 February 2023, Services Australia and DSS told us that, in the period between becoming aware of the issue and advising our Office, they:

• obtained several draft and final advices from multiple legal providers

• identified approximately 13,000 requests for reviews of debts that may be impacted by

income apportionment – they placed these reviews on hold while the agencies considered

how best to approach them, and

• identified another approximately 87,000 potential debts which may be affected by income

apportionment.

Due to the scale of the issue and the significant number of potentially affected customers, on 14 March 2023 the Ombudsman initiated this investigation using his own motion powers. The Ombudsman used section 9 of the Ombudsman Act 1976 (Ombudsman Act) to require information from Services Australia and DSS about income apportionment. Under the Ombudsman Act, it is an offence to fail or refuse to respond to a section 9 notice without a reasonable excuse.

Services Australia can no longer off its own bat crack welfare recipients' PC, mobile, email & social media passwords in order to spy - since 13 October 2015 its been obliged to use the Australian Federal Police, an even more indiscreet Commonwealth agency.

 

On 17 July 2015 Deputy Secretary of the Dept. of Human Services (now Services Australia) Malisa Golightly, of ‘Robodebt’ notoriety, wrote to the Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Criminal Justice Group in the Attorney-General’s Department, seeking the department's continued inclusion as an enforcement agency under the Commonwealth Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979.

At that time the Dept. of Human Services employed 295 investigators and 89 intelligence analysts who typically conducted 3,000 criminal investigation per year – using the full range of powers available to an “enforcement agency” in the 1 July 2015 version of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act.

Here is a potted history of what happened after that.

ITNews, 4 April 2022:

Services Australia is using telecommunications metadata and password-bypassing software to investigate welfare recipients suspected of claiming single payments while in relationships.

The Centrelink administrator told the Attorney General’s Department (ADG) that metadata is used to detect “people who receive payments as a single person while in a marriage-like relationship,” according to documents obtained by iTnews.

Submissions to AGD in 2015 and again in 2022 [pdf], obtained through a freedom of information request, list types of fraud the agency uses welfare recipients’ telecommunications metadata to detect.

A Services Australia spokesperson told iTnews that both telecommunications metadata and password-bypassing technology from Israeli vendor Cellebrite are only used when fraudulent claims trigger criminal investigations.

This contrasts with the more common non-compliance investigations, which prevent and recover debts resulting from over-payments, such as the notorious robodebt scheme.

However, the spokesperson would not say how much money a person needs to be suspected of being overpaid before a non-compliance investigation is tipped into a criminal investigation, making it hard to estimate the extent to which the technologies are used to determine relationship-status.

Moreover, welfare recipients told iTnews, while Services Australia has said that Cellebrite is only used for criminal investigations, data may be extracted from their devices before charges have been laid; and Services Australia may continue to pursue the debt as a non-compliance investigation even if the suspect is not prosecuted…...

Metadata and relationship-status

It is not clear what types of metadata are used to glean if welfare recipients are single, however criteria listed on Services Australia’s website for “how we assess if you’re a couple” includes: “financial aspects of your relationship, the nature of your household, social aspects of your relationship, [and] if you have a sexual relationship.”

The Services Australia spokesperson told iTnews that "the key metadata we request enables us to identify records linked to telephone numbers or IP addresses to support criminal investigations.”

The spokesperson did not answer whether it includes geolocation data on a device’s connection to the internet or the sender-recipient records of a user's communications.

Services Australia was cut off from directly asking telcos for metadata in late 2015, after having had the power since 2009.

It now makes requests for metadata, "where required", through the Australian Federal Police.

Services Australia has asked the government at least twice to have its powers back.

According to the FoI, Services Australia requested AGD declare it an 'enforcement agency' under Section 176A of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act (TIA) in 2015 and made the same request seven years later during a current review of electronic surveillance laws…...

In response to its 2015 application, AGD suggested “joint investigations arrangements with a criminal law-enforcement agency” as an “alternative means of accessing historical telecommunications data.” The welfare provider took the advice.

Since Services Australia started accessing telecommunications metadata indirectly through the AFP, it is unclear how many investigations involved fraud claims based on relationship-status.

According to its most recent annual reports, in 2021–22 Services Australia conducted 709 criminal investigations, 988 administrative investigations and made 203 referrals to the CDPP.

A quick look at the Commonwealth Ombudsman' views on the often erratic response of the Australian Federal Police to its requirement to comply with telecommunication data law:

https://www.ombudsman.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/112476/Report-into-the-AFPs-use-and-administration-of-telecommunications-data-powers.pdf

There were several important factors that informed my decision to commence an investigation, including:

• the covert and intrusive nature of this power

• the duration and potential scale of non-compliance with the TIA Act as a result of ACT Policing accessing telecommunications data outside the AFP’s approved process

• the omission of the affected records from our Office’s regular compliance inspections

• previous recommendations our Office has made to the AFP about non-compliance with the TIA Act. 

Like law enforcement Services Australia is not eager to advertise the shortcomings of its own errant staff, but the character of this bureaucracy which uses covert surveillance on welfare recipients is not above interrogation. 

Services Australia is a federal government department which includes Centrelink.

A brief Internet search reveals for the most part sparsely worded information. The following is a compilation from government and media sources.

In a two year period covering 2005 to September 2006 Centrelink investigated 790 APS Code of Conduct complaints, with 766 referred for investigation and 585 staff found to have accessed the private information of welfare recipients or entered into a conflict of interest situation in breach of the code. Sanctions for these breaches reportedly ranged from 19 dismissals, 92 resignations and, more than 300 salary reductions or fines. Another est. 134 staff were demoted, reprimanded and warned. Five cases were referred to the AFP or Director of Public Prosecutions.

In 2006–07 Centrelink staff breached the information privacy principal in 367 instances, including 108 unauthorised access, 4 unauthorised disclosure and 10 unauthorised use. Another 17 new cases were opened with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, bringing the total to 20 cases for the year. Centrelink finalised six cases with the office and as at 30 June 2007, 14 cases were still open.

By the next financial year 2007-08, Centrelink recorded 355 privacy breaches of which 100 were unauthorised access, 13 unauthorised disclosure and 1 unauthorised use. The remainder of breaches said to be primarily mailing errors.

In 2008-09 Centrelink found 368 proven privacy incidents of which 85 were unauthorised access of information, 14 were unauthorised disclosure and 1 was unauthorised use.

Financial year 2009-10 saw Centrelink admitted to 465 proven privacy incidents and it appears to have undertaken 286 staff code of conduct complaints investigations in which 187 staff member were found to have breached the code of conduct.

The following financial year 2010-11, Centrelink undertook 197 staff code of conduct complaints investigations, including 25 investigations of improper use of internet or email, and 67 investigations of ‘improper access to personal information’. The latter occurring when employees accessed records either without a business reason, or despite being directed not to do so, for example if the records belonged to themselves, family or friends. A total of 128 Centrelink staff members were found to have breached the code of conduct.

In 2011 Centrelink & Medicare were integrated into the Dept. of Human Services.

In 2011-12  the Dept. of Human Services finalised 205 staff breaches of the APS Code of Conduct, including:

• 68 instances of improper access to personal information;

• 5 unauthorised disclosure of information;

• 10 conflict of interest;

• 48 inappropriate behaviour other than bullying or harassment;

• 17 harassment and/or bullying;

• 8 fraud other than theft;

• 1 theft;

• 8 improper use of resources other than email;

• 25 improper use of internet or email;

• 8 inappropriate use of government vehicles;

• 7 improper use of position or status;

• 4 behaviour of the employee outside of work;

• 2 misuse of drugs and/or alcohol, and

• 2 other.

The next year 2012-13 the Dept. of Human Services finalised 165 matters involving 214 breaches of the code of conduct - across the gamut of human behaviour displayed in the workplace including 82  instances of improper access to personal information, 5 unauthorised disclosure of information and 26 conflict of interest. 

In 2013-14 the Department of Human Services reported there were 472 matters involving staff breaches of code of conduct of which 234 were finalised, including 118 improper access to personal information, 4 unauthorised disclosure, 181 conflict of interest and 66 fraud. 

The next financial year 2014-15 saw reports of 1,939 substantiated privacy incidents from which there were officially 268 findings of staff breaches of the code of conduct.

In 2015-16 there were 368 findings of a breach of the code of conduct.

Note: From 21.9.2015 to 18.2.2016 Stuart Robert was the Minister for Human Services.

In 2016-17 there were a reported 304 staff breaches of the code of conduct.

NOTE: From 21.9.2015 to 18.2.2016 Stuart Robert was the Minister for Human Services.

In 2017-18 a total of 235 staff code of conduct investigations were completed and 224 findings of a breach were made.

In 2018-19 the Department of Human Services reported a total of 249 staff code of conduct investigations were completed, with 241 findings of a breach of the code.

NOTE: From  29.5.2019 to 30.3.2021 Stuart Robert was Minister for Government Services, which included the Dept. of Human Services in his portfolio.

In May 2019 the Dept. of Human Services had a name change, becoming Services Australia.

From July 2017 to end June 2019 almost half of the breaches arose from unauthorised access to information, where staff had inappropriately accessed customer records. Almost a quarter of all breaches allegedly related to incorrect reporting of income by staff who were also in receipt of Centrelink benefits.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman's Report of 2019-20 mention that;  We received more complaints about Services Australia than any other agency (11,222), although this was a decrease of 3.7 per cent compared to last year. 

In one case; A complainant’s disability support pension (DSP) was cancelled as a result of a staff error and while seeking a review of this error they received an inheritance.

A trustee acting on behalf of the complainant contacted Services Australia however was unable to have the DSP payments reinstated, despite payments not being made in excess of 12 months.

As a result of the Office’s engagement with Services Australia during an investigation, the complainant’s circumstances were reviewed and they were back-paid over $45,000 for the entire period since their DSP was cancelled. Additionally, Services Australia provided feedback to the officer who made the initial error to improve future service.

In his following 2020-21 annual report the Commonwealth Ombudsman placed Services Australia in; the number of disclosures assessed meeting the criteria under s 26 of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 and alleged kinds of disclosable conduct to which the disclosures relate. 

This involves 8 instances of:

• Contravention of a law of the Commonwealth, state or territory (5)

• Maladministration (2)

• Abuse of public trust (2)

• Wastage of public money (2)

• Conduct that results in, or that increases, the risk of danger to the health or safety of one or more persons (3)

• Abuse of public office (3)

• Conduct that may result in disciplinary action

(6) 

In 2021-22 the Commonwealth Ombudsman reported that 52% of complaints it received from the public involved Services Australia-Centrelink.

Unemployment numbers in the NSW Northern Rivers region

 

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the national unemployment rate in February 2023 remained at 3.5% (est.559,200 people). 

NOTE: ABS Labor Force, Australia data for February 2023 was published on 16.03.23 & the next Labor Force, Australia covering March 2023 will be released on 13.04.23.

In New South Wales the unemployment rate held steady at 3.4% (est. 153,100 people) and seasonally adjusted stood at 3.2%. Broken down from original data ABS records there was an unemployment rate of 3.6% for males and 3.2% for females.

According to idcommunity:demograhic resources, monthly data published by the Department of Social Services (DSS) for February 2023 shows that there were 120,135 Jobseeker and Youth Allowance recipients in regional New South Wales. That figure represents 7.1% of the total regional workforce age population – a drop of 0.2% since February 2022.

By comparison there were 15,767Jobseeker and Youth Allowance recipients in the Northern Rivers region in February 2023. That figure represents 8.8% of all people of workforce age in the region – a drop of 0.5% since February 2022.

In terms of local government areas the combined Jobseeker and Youth Unemployment numbers are:

Tweed Shire – 4,135 people being 7.4% of the LGA workforce age population.

Clarence Valley – 3,210 people being 11.1% of the LGA workforce age population.

Lismore City – 2,736 people being 10.1% of the LGA workforce age population.

Byron Shire – 2,115 people being 9.3% of the LGA workforce age population.

Ballina Shire – 1,560 people being 6.0% of the LGA workforce age population.

Richmond Valley – 1,378 people being 10.3% of the LGA workforce age population.

Kyogle Shire – 663 people being 12.7% of the LGA workforce age population.

Dept. of Social Services monthly data by Statistical Area Level 2 shows that in February 2023 the two Northern Rivers LGAs with the highest levels of unemployment had this profile for major population centres:

• In Tweed Heads & Tweed Heads South there was a combined total of 1,420 people on an unemployment payment/allowance, with Murwillumbah & Murwillumbah Region had a combined total of 1,210 people. While Pottsville Region had 500 people on unemployment payment/allowance, Banora Point 490 people and Kingscliff-Fingal Head 450 people.

• Grafton City & Grafton Region has a combined total of 2,400 people on an unemployment payment/allowance, while Maclean-Yamba-Iluka had a total of 810 people.

Note: The Board of Reserve Bank of Australia expects the national unemployment rate to rise towards the end of 2023.