Despite a public focus on punitive approaches to welfare fraud, the number of social security fraud prosecutions has fallen in recent years.
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Debt agreements have become the fastest form of personal insolvency in Australia. But in many cases, there are better options available to manage debt.
Critics of the Cashless Welfare Card trial overlook the fact it is curbing alcohol and gambling problems – and it's what the communities want.
The extent of Centrelink’s customer service delivery problems is legendary – and it's been getting worse in recent years.
We created a graphic to explain what's really going on when Centrelink says its wait time is under 16 minutes.
Privacy laws in Australia need to be reformed, and fast, to stop governments bullying people through publication of personal information.
The Centrelink debt recovery system reminds us that many data systems are prone to error, and that's built in to how they work.
By far the most significant projected savings in the government's omnibus bill is the phasing out of end-of-year supplements for family tax benefit recipients.
State revenue offices are using data matching to identify people who earn income from Airbnb, then sending notices that they may be liable for land tax, even though this remains a legal grey area.
The problems with Centrelink's data-matching system stem from reconciling datasets held by different agencies. What if we used a blockchain to create a single source of data?
Centrelink's debt recovery problems reflect an over-simplistic application of policy to the complexity of workers’ lives in a flexible labour market.
Centrelink's debt recovery system is using information in a way that it was not designed to be applied, without properly adjusting for differences between the tax and social security system.
Is the Coalition right to say that, at any one time, there is around $3.5 billion of debt to the Commonwealth due to fraud, non-compliance or misreporting in the welfare system?
It's not just about finding money for things like solar panels – poorer households can also find it harder to gain access to reliable information about the green energy options they do have.
Centrelink's failure to answer calls is a sign of a deeper problem: a lack of respect from government services for vulnerable citizens.
There seems little doubt that Families Minister Jenny Macklin’s office attempted to “fix up” her extraordinary faux pas last Tuesday – her claim that yes, she could live on the daily income of $35 received…
If Finance Minister Penny Wong is serious about delivering budget savings to Australians, perhaps she should rethink the government’s commitment to its contentious income management program. By cutting…
The start of the new financial year has also heralded the start of one of the major reforms of our income support system, yet few know it is happening. The Income Management program quarantines at least…
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Professorial Fellow, Jumbunna IHL, University of Technology Sydney
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Peter Whiteford is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
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Associate Professor, Digital Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Queensland
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Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of Canberra
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Professor, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor, College of Business, government & Law, Flinders University
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Honorary Research Associate, School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University
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Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous Studies, University of Melbourne
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Senior Research Fellow at City Futures Research Centre, UNSW
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Associate Professor, Curtin Law School and Curtin Business School, Curtin University
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Professor, UNSW
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Brendan Gogarty is a Friend of The Conversation.
Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Tasmania
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Lecturer, School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University
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Associate Professor in Sociology, Flinders University
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Lecturer in Mathematics, Flinders University
