Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services, Housing, Youth and Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was recently contacted in my Sydney office by a constituent of mine—Leanne, a university student from Balmain. She was experiencing some problems with Centrelink that raise some broader policy issues that I want to share with the chamber tonight.

Leanne had applied for youth allowance to support her while she completes her study, and during the application process she was told by a Centrelink officer that she need not report her earnings as she was not working and therefore she was not earning any money. Her application for youth allowance was approved by the local Centrelink office. As part of her studies, Leanne was required to travel to Armidale, where she was doing some on-campus study. Before she left for Armidale, Leanne received a letter from Centrelink stating that she had to report any earnings. She quite rightly contacted Centrelink and restated that she was not working and therefore not earning any money, and she believed the issue had been cleared up before she went to Armidale.

When she was in Armidale her Austudy payment was cut off and she was told—when she phoned up, mind you; she was not warned that the payment was going to be cut off—her payment was cut off because she did not report her income, despite the fact that she had twice been told that she need not report her income because she did not have any. Centrelink admitted the mistake over the phone and told her that a back payment would be made. However, due to a data entry error—a ‘keying error’ as they call it—of one digit, the money was not sent to her bank account; it was sent somewhere other than her bank account. At that point Leanne had no money to get home to Sydney. She had to borrow money to get on a bus to return to Sydney. She subsequently had to borrow money from her flatmate’s father for necessities such as something to eat.

She was told by Centrelink that they could not re-issue her back pay—they agreed it was their fault that they had cut her off; they agreed that she was owed back pay—until they had recovered the money from whichever place in the ether they had mistakenly sent it to. This girl, who has had no money for several weeks, is borrowing money for bus fares and food, is told that she may have to wait days, weeks or months while Centrelink recovers a payment that it has made erroneously to a bank account other than her own. They did tell her eventually that they could give her a $200 emergency payment, but that she would have to go to the Centrelink office to have that payment processed. Leanne was faced with spending her last dollar on sending her assignment to university to be marked, or catching a bus to the Centrelink office to try to convince them to give her some of the money that they already admitted that they owe her.

She was desperate and extremely upset when she rang my office. My extremely efficient and hardworking staff contacted the Centrelink office. First we were told that the $200 advance could be made and that it could be done electronically—which was an advance on what Leanne had been told. We were told that Centrelink accepted full responsibility for the mistakes, but we still had the contested issue of the $660 that Leanne clearly was owed by Centrelink and that she was desperately in need of. They were saying that she would have to wait until they recovered it from a bank. Curiously, they told her that this would be a difficult process and that they could not get information from the bank about whether this bank account actually existed. Leanne was able to get that information simply by phoning the bank.

I am very grateful that in the end Centrelink decided to pay not just the $200 advance but the $660 that Leanne was owed. But Leanne is very distressed that, very upset and quite hungry, she had to ring me as her member of parliament and seek my intervention, and that she had to make decisions about whether to complete her course requirements or get enough money to pay the rent—all because of this quite unusual policy decision by Centrelink, who, having admitted their error and having said that they knew the money had gone into the wrong bank account, were making Leanne responsible and making her wait for that money to be recovered. It makes absolutely no sense that Centrelink, having admitted an error in this fashion, would make a desperate person wait for the money they are entitled to. (Time expired)