Centrelink to crack down on rich welfare cheats

[Deleted]

Centrelink crackdown nets $43 million saving from wealthy welfare cheats

More than 1000 welfare recipients who had large amounts of "unexplained wealth" pass through their bank accounts have been caught in a nationwide crackdown on rich welfare cheats.

A joint operation by the Department of Human Services and financial analysis centre AUSTRAC stopped $43 million-worth of future benefits going to recipients deemed too wealthy to receive them.


Minister for human services Michael Keenan appeared on the TODAY show to explain how the department was using new technology to crack down on wealthy rorters.

"We now have the ability to look into their bank accounts and find out if they are doing the wrong thing," said Keenan.

"We will reclaim that money and in some cases we'll prosecute and they'll go to prison."

Welfare cheats with secret fortunes targeted in latest Centrelink crackdown
The crackdown comes as AUSTRAC was given new powers to track personal finances in an effort to cut down on terrorism financing.

A data-matching agreement between the department of human services and AUSTRAC allowed officials to determine if recipients were harbouring secret wealth in separate accounts.

One recipient, a disability support pensioner from New South Wales, was ordered to repay $160,000 after failing to explain $700,000 worth of deposits made into their account over four years, despite not declaring any income at all.

A parent from Perth was ordered to repay more than $100,000 after declaring just $35,000 to the Department but reaping more than $220,000.

In Victoria a retail worker earnt $100,000 but only declared $20,000 to Centrelink. They were ordered to repay $30,000 and pleaded guilty to welfare fraud.

Government hunting billions of dollars in welfare rorts
On average, each welfare recipient caught in the crackdown was ordered to repay $43,000.

"Where we see anomalies, where we see problems, we look into it and where people are doing the wrong thing we can find them," said Keenan.

"We have all the technology to track you down and prosecute you to the full extent of the law."

finance.nine.com.au/2018/03/16/09/40/centrelink-crackdown-nets-over-1000-wealthy-welfare-cheats

[mspurple]

Interesting read, thanks for that bear.

I can not for the life of me comprehend why anyone would bother with Centrelink payments if you have the amounts of money they say these people had flowing through their bank accounts.
These people sound as greedy as most of our politicians.

[Deleted]

Mar 17, 2018 5:38:17 GMT 7 mspurple said:

Interesting read, thanks for that bear.

I can not for the life of me comprehend why anyone would bother with Centrelink payments if you have the amounts of money they say these people had flowing through their bank accounts.
These people sound as greedy as most of our politicians.

In two words mspurple Pure/Sheer Greed! Oops... does that count as two or three.

The punishment they receive is totally incommensurate with their Darstadly Deeds; nothing short of Jail Terms is what they should All Get and perhaps Asset Seizures to boot! Cheers bear

[nomadic]

gee you and i should be careful bear. like all those on pensions living in Asia I suppose. Filthy rich. And while I am definitely against these Mammon worshipers it does seem that BIG BROTHER is well and truly alive.

[itsmylife08]

I for one would not condone welfare cheating, but why o why o why does this Government continue to harass and demonize people on welfare when at least 90% are fair dinkum and doing the right thing.

It really does make me angry, as nomadic and others have said why on earth would people with that amount of money, bother to collect a pittance and risk their liberty.

I'll state the obvious, they should go after the white collar criminals grrrrrrrrrrrr

[tasjo]

the thing is that there are exclusions to declaring 'income' and what 'income' is defined as...

As an example, someone who receives a TPD payment in their super and accurately declares the withdrawals (using the group certificates provided) would still potentially have discrepencies between what they declare to Centrelink as 'income' because it isn't earned income and is taxed differently to other income. Same with an ex-gratia payment in settlement of a claim (ie Fairwork) that isn't compensation. Or inheritance, which is also not subject to the same income test but would invariably be paid into someones bank account in a lump sum.

Given the absolute shamozzle of the robodebt I wouldn't expect this to be any better.

I don't think its as simple as greed in many cases.

[nomadic]

When it comes to real cheats centrelink is the only cause. If they didn't let them do it in the first place then they wouldn't have to waste time and money correcting their in competence.

[Deleted]

If these people really do have a decent amount of wealth then those are the ones the gov should be going after not false debt notices to innocent parties.

[notifications off]

Up until about five years ago C-link would send us regular quarterly income/asset statements which included detailed amounts of our bank accounts etc. This was good system.

Then C-link replaced quarterly detailed statements with statements that only showed total amounts and these were only sent when requested. A hopeless system, the reason given for this backward step was protection of privacy/security bah bah.

In late 2016 following my complaints about not receiving meaningful income/asset statements we received and returned an Income and Asset paper form of about 30 pages.
Then we received nothing from C-link other than letters which included our total earnings.

In late 2017 .. like magic I received an income/asset statement which again included details, but alas my partners statement showed only her total and no details.
Now the fact that ‘it is again possible for C-link to provide detailed income/asset statements’ is encouraging.

In Jan and Feb 2018 I phoned and finally got a detailed statement for my partner and found a few mistakes.

My last and most recent phone call to C-link lasted almost 2 hours.
Reason for long call was that the 2016 information provided on paper form had been incorrectly entered into C-link computer and a small overpayment had occurred.
The C-link officer then had to manually override about 30 fortnightly payments to correct C-link fault.

At the conclusion of this long process I again requested to receive updated and detailed income/asset statements.
In the mail I received income/asset statement with total only without any details .. and my partner received nothing except a letter which included total earnings.

In Law ... clients must notify .. do C-link have an obligation to notify clients so clients can notify C-link.

The conspiracy theorist in me might think that C-link have skilfully designed a system to discourage clients from knowing what to do ………….. !
Meanwhile C-link laid plans with AUSTRAC

[mikey]

Yes, the system is a farce. When Facebook now has an intimate understanding of my psychology way over there in San Francisco, because its been tracking me for years, its ridiculous that Centrelink can't help us manage our very limited circumstances so we don't have to spend hours helping them.

I'm am not about to apologise or make excuses, but...

The 1970's computer systems, are still being upgraded, 1 small component at a time and slowly. As each new function comes available, the staff involved, (because this is there job, they are not actual users of the system), they get all excited at they possibilities they wrote on a whiteboard back in 2014.

and then it all goes wrong, The Guardian jump on it, ABC does an in-depth report and then dragged kicking and screaming is News corp, though only the in the Australian.

So as a recipient of the DSP who received an inheritance a few years ago, declared everything, then 4 years later get a phone call saying I owe money on interest for 8 weeks it sat in the bank, even though i had done everything right. Not a lot of debt, but right on when i was to travel and caused me losing my ability to get an advance for 3 months.

i was told by the long term employee in finances at centrelink on the phone at the time (these people aren't the enemy, bigger salary at banks), that new systems were being rolled out, they were testing functionality, and the finance staff had lost the ability to assess cases on investigative merit and were just being handed new cases in a queue. Screw the human factor, all about the AI. we know how this has ended.

So, at the time, he said that Centrelink do not have realtime access to anyone's bank accounts. but... the banks pay tax relative to your accounts, and all this gets flagged with Tax office, which Centrelink is now integrated with, and Austrac track money transfers and that was going to be integrated, etc etc. I took up an hour of his time, since i was copping a deduction, about what was happening.

So, yes the system as it stands sux. It is better than it was, but the rush to show off the new features has meant very poor implementation. But, I just increased my repayments on my last advance thru MyGov instead of spending 2 hours on the phone. That's a win. However i spent 8 hours fixing the last physical tax return from back in 2015, only a few months ago, when i noticed someone counted my dsp as real income on top of my pension. Which means these new "systems" would have classed me as a rorter, so better to fight with tax dept than C'link. Was quicker to get thru too. (still needed to lodge a paper form to fix it.
but, tax returns lodged online don't make this error now).

so, safe bet these are the headline stories that have a basis in truth, there are at least 2.5 million people checked out within the austrac centerlink alliance, so doing the math's, if the average is $43,000 that's only 1000 people.

i reckon there's that many people not scanning that extra chocolate bar at my local Woolworths every week these days. 

[Denis-NFA]

Mar 19, 2018 14:46:46 GMT 7 mikey said:

......

i reckon there's that many people not scanning that extra chocolate bar at my local Woolworths every week these days. 

LOL

[latindancer]

(Perhaps I should have posted this in the other thread entitled "The Real Cheats")

Something is not adding up here :

Tax concessions to wealthy costing six times the dole: Anglicare

Tax concessions to the wealthiest fifth of households are costing the federal budget about half as much as the total cost of welfare payments, according to new research from Anglicare and the left-of-centre Per Capita think tank.

www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-26/tax-concessions-put-welfare-costs-in-perspective-anglicare/9585930

[Deleted]

Mar 26, 2018 4:57:54 GMT 7 latindancer said:

(Perhaps I should have posted this in the other thread entitled "The Real Cheats")

Something is not adding up here :

Tax concessions to wealthy costing six times the dole: Anglicare

Tax concessions to the wealthiest fifth of households are costing the federal budget about half as much as the total cost of welfare payments, according to new research from Anglicare and the left-of-centre Per Capita think tank.

www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-26/tax-concessions-put-welfare-costs-in-perspective-anglicare/9585930

yes $68 billion to wealthy people who don't even need the money while newstart is only $11 billion and $250 a week

[krystal]

Mar 26, 2018 5:54:40 GMT 7 @wombat79 said:

Mar 26, 2018 4:57:54 GMT 7 latindancer said:

yes $68 billion to wealthy people who don't even need the money while newstart is only $11 billion and $250 a week

Let's not forget that at least 30% of the Newstart payments figure is to "support services" like Employment Services and Indue Cards costs.

[Deleted]

Apr 10, 2018 14:23:26 GMT 7 krystal said:

Mar 26, 2018 5:54:40 GMT 7 @wombat79 said:

yes $68 billion to wealthy people who don't even need the money while newstart is only $11 billion and $250 a week

Let's not forget that at least 30% of the Newstart payments figure is to "support services" like Employment Services and Indue Cards costs.

And those who should be on DSP!