We know all too well here at the SDC how hard it can be for Australian seniors to make ends meet.

So what would you do if you were suddenly hit with an impossible-to-miss letter which demanded the repayment of $65,000? And the letter wasn’t just from anyone, it was from Centrelink. It’s frightening to even consider.

Rosemary Gay, a 76-year-old pensioner from Ballarat in Victoria, faced that nightmare when a letter from Centrelink warned her that she had to pay back the staggering figure – and she only had two weeks to do so.

The royal commission is currently hearing testimonials from impacted Australians. Image Credit: Shutterstock

The letter claimed that if she didn’t make the payment within two weeks, the government would start taking it out of her pension. The sum she was requested to pay was more than three times her annual salary.

As a part-time receptionist who had worked 14 hours a week, she earned less than $20k in a single year.

'It turned my life upside down. It was just sheer terror that I owed a figure which was just such a huge amount, that I had never earned that much money…How could I owe that much money and I had to come up with it in three or four weeks?' Gay said.

Unfortunately, it’s a story that’s all too common in Australia right now. In 2020, it was determined that the government’s robodebt system had wrongfully recouped more than $750 million from approximately 381,000 people.

Rosemary Gay spoke about her experience as a part of the robodebt royal commission, which is currently taking place in Brisbane.

The commission is hearing from affected individuals from all over Australia, as they give horrific first-hand accounts of unjust debt collection. There have been multiple extremely distressing accounts from victims, including stories of spiralling depression, money taken from family businesses and the forced sale of homes.

Speaking to the royal commission about her experience, Gay said she made $17,436 as a part-time receptionist between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011. However, on October 12, 2016, she received a debt notice for $64,998.17, something she said left her with little hope.

'All I could see was that I may be faced with selling my home and losing everything that I had worked for in my 70 years and I just saw it all going away instantly,' she said.

Centrelink claimed that discrepancies between Gay’s reported income and the amount registered with the Australian Tax Office had resulted in Gay being overpaid.

'The data that I provided to them of my earnings would be exactly the same as what would be contained in my group certificate in my tax return at the end of that financial year,' she said.

Ms Gay thought the whole matter would be resolved quickly, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

'I presumed that once I'd confirmed that (amount) was in my group certificate, that would be the end,' she said.

'That they would correlate that to be the same as what I had reported to them, and expected that would be the end of it.'

Gay said she was shocked and angry that Centrelink had caused her 'such a traumatic experience’.

'It was a very dark period of time for me and one that is very difficult to relive,' she said.

Key Takeaways

• Rosemary Gay experienced ‘sheer terror’ after receiving a letter demanding she pay back the $65,000.
• After two reviews and two months, the correct debt Rosemary owed was determined to be just $120.33.
• Rosemary had been employed part-time and was paid around $22 an hour, so her annual salary would never have reached $65,000.
• The federal court ruled the practice of using Australians’ annual tax information to establish welfare debts unlawful, and it is believed to have wrongfully recovered more than $750 million from 381,000 people.

It took two reviews, two months, and a lot of sleepless nights until she was told that the correct debt was only $120.33.

Members, if you or someone you know has been impacted by Robodebt, then please check out the websites of NotMyDebt and the Financial Rights Legal Centre.

NotMyDebt, a group founded by Lyndsey Jackson, was created to help victims of Robodebt. She said people she spoke to were 'facing homelessness' and 'worried they were going to get in trouble and lose their kids'.

We would be remiss not to acknowledge that the royal commission is still an ongoing investigation and we will do our best to keep you up to date with all the latest information.

Former Coalition ministers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter are expected to front the commission next week.

You may remember Tudge’s 2016 A Current Affair interview where he stated, ‘We’ll find you, we’ll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison.’

You can watch the clip here:


We wish Rosemary and all those impacted by the robodebt system the best.

Members, what are your thoughts on this story?

 

[Klaus A]

We know all too well here at the SDC how hard it can be for Australian seniors to make ends meet.

So what would you do if you were suddenly hit with an impossible-to-miss letter which demanded the repayment of $65,000? And the letter wasn’t just from anyone, it was from Centrelink. It’s frightening to even consider.

Rosemary Gay, a 76-year-old pensioner from Ballarat in Victoria, faced that nightmare when a letter from Centrelink warned her that she had to pay back the staggering figure – and she only had two weeks to do so.

View attachment 12181

The royal commission is currently hearing testimonials from impacted Australians. Image Credit: Shutterstock

The letter claimed that if she didn’t make the payment within two weeks, the government would start taking it out of her pension. The sum she was requested to pay was more than three times her annual salary.

As a part-time receptionist who had worked 14 hours a week, she earned less than $20k in a single year.

'It turned my life upside down. It was just sheer terror that I owed a figure which was just such a huge amount, that I had never earned that much money…How could I owe that much money and I had to come up with it in three or four weeks?' Gay said.

Unfortunately, it’s a story that’s all too common in Australia right now. In 2020, it was determined that the government’s robodebt system had wrongfully recouped more than $750 million from approximately 381,000 people.

Rosemary Gay spoke about her experience as a part of the robodebt royal commission, which is currently taking place in Brisbane.

The commission is hearing from affected individuals from all over Australia, as they give horrific first-hand accounts of unjust debt collection. There have been multiple extremely distressing accounts from victims, including stories of spiralling depression, money taken from family businesses and the forced sale of homes.

Speaking to the royal commission about her experience, Gay said she made $17,436 as a part-time receptionist between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011. However, on October 12, 2016, she received a debt notice for $64,998.17, something she said left her with little hope.

'All I could see was that I may be faced with selling my home and losing everything that I had worked for in my 70 years and I just saw it all going away instantly,' she said.

Centrelink claimed that discrepancies between Gay’s reported income and the amount registered with the Australian Tax Office had resulted in Gay being overpaid.

'The data that I provided to them of my earnings would be exactly the same as what would be contained in my group certificate in my tax return at the end of that financial year,' she said.

Ms Gay thought the whole matter would be resolved quickly, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

'I presumed that once I'd confirmed that (amount) was in my group certificate, that would be the end,' she said.

'That they would correlate that to be the same as what I had reported to them, and expected that would be the end of it.'

Gay said she was shocked and angry that Centrelink had caused her 'such a traumatic experience’.

'It was a very dark period of time for me and one that is very difficult to relive,' she said.

Key Takeaways

• Rosemary Gay experienced ‘sheer terror’ after receiving a letter demanding she pay back the $65,000.
• After two reviews and two months, the correct debt Rosemary owed was determined to be just $120.33.
• Rosemary had been employed part-time and was paid around $22 an hour, so her annual salary would never have reached $65,000.
• The federal court ruled the practice of using Australians’ annual tax information to establish welfare debts unlawful, and it is believed to have wrongfully recovered more than $750 million from 381,000 people.

It took two reviews, two months, and a lot of sleepless nights until she was told that the correct debt was only $120.33.

Members, if you or someone you know has been impacted by Robodebt, then please check out the websites of NotMyDebt and the Financial Rights Legal Centre.

NotMyDebt, a group founded by Lyndsey Jackson, was created to help victims of Robodebt. She said people she spoke to were 'facing homelessness' and 'worried they were going to get in trouble and lose their kids'.

We would be remiss not to acknowledge that the royal commission is still an ongoing investigation and we will do our best to keep you up to date with all the latest information.

Former Coalition ministers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter are expected to front the commission next week.

You may remember Tudge’s 2016 A Current Affair interview where he stated, ‘We’ll find you, we’ll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison.’

You can watch the clip here:


We wish Rosemary and all those impacted by the robodebt system the best.

Members, what are your thoughts on this story?

 

[Klaus A]

When someone works and received centrelink payment, this than not declared, than this person runs into trouble. The $65000 will be an accumulation of several years and you have to get legal advice.

 

[JayEeGeeP]

Any politicians involved in creating the robo debt system along with any Centrelink employees who enforced those rules should be in prison or fined minimum of a years pay so they know how stressful it was for the people involved. Centrelink is a very disturbing organisation and seem to think it is ok to treat people who have probably paid taxes for their entire working lives like criminals.

 

[Brucemj]

Alarm bells should have been ringing when the first complaints came in and they could see there was a major problem with the system, yet they denied that anything was wrong, people died, people lost their homes, people lost their businesses, people had breakdowns, marriages, families and relationships were destroyed, is there going to be any real compensation for the people affected, and will anybody really be held to account for their incompetence and blatant lies?

 

[mylittletibbies]

When someone works and received centrelink payment, this than not declared, than this person runs into trouble. The $65000 will be an accumulation of several years and you have to get legal advice.

The lady had been reporting her income, it wasn't an accumulation over years, the debt was only $120.33.
I have had dealings in the past with Centrelink where they accused me of fraud, I spent over 6 hours in their office, with so called big knobs accusing me of not returning requested paperwork, etc. in the end they discovered that the paperwork had been filed on my daughter's file in error.
On another occasion, when we had disposed of a jointly owned property, 3 times we provided the requested paperwork, but they insisted we hadn't and stopped our pensions.
A call to our local member had them quickly restored and nothing more heard from Centrelink.
One of the most important prequisites when applying for a job with Centrelink is that you must be a frigging idiot!!!

 

[Rob44]

Robotheft. That's it, nothing more and nothing less. The politicians and Centrelink staff concerned should be jailed as common criminals. There is no excuse.

It pays to keep copies of every piece of paper you have sent out and use a spread-sheet of what has been paid and and how and to pay by paper cheque and record the cheque number and date. Set up a simple Excell spread sheet if you have a home computer. Banks keep copies of cheques for 7 years by law so your bank can give you a copy of every cheque they have cleared if need be.

These days telecommunications companies and etcetera do it all by computer and their staff are trained solely to look at a screen so that they can tell you that you are wrong and it's not the company's/government's fault (besides apologising for keeping you waiting for 20 minutes before they answer the telephone) . When it comes to paying bills, the worst thing you can do is to do it electronically. It is too easy for records to get lost.
.
.

 

[JayEeGeeP]

When someone works and received centrelink payment, this than not declared, than this person runs into trouble. The $65000 will be an accumulation of several years and you have to get legal advice.

It was declared.

 

[Ricci]

When my hubby first retired Centrelink told him he would have to apply for a UK pension or risk losing his Aussie one. This he did and we kept Centrelink in the loop all the way through. He duly received a part pension from the UK and we informed Centrelink immediately and nothing happened, his payments remained the same. Six months later we got a bill for just over $6500 that they said had been overpaid by them due to amounts received from the UK. Go figure. We tried to fight it on the basis that they had been told everything and had the figures six months prior but all to no good, they reduced that amount of pension he received until the "debt" was repaid. A short time later we received an extra payment due to an earlier short payment. At this point we threw our hands up in horror, does anyone at Centrelink actually know what's going on? It turns out his debt was more like $600 than $6500 but of course the stuff up wasn't theirs, they had done nothing wrong, he had reported it wrongly (?). The fact that he gave them all the paperwork from the UK didn't count in their calculations!

 

[Gaena]

The lady had been reporting her income, it wasn't an accumulation over years, the debt was only $120.33.
I have had dealings in the past with Centrelink where they accused me of fraud, I spent over 6 hours in their office, with so called big knobs accusing me of not returning requested paperwork, etc. in the end they discovered that the paperwork had been filed on my daughter's file in error.
On another occasion, when we had disposed of a jointly owned property, 3 times we provided the requested paperwork, but they insisted we hadn't and stopped our pensions.
A call to our local member had them quickly restored and nothing more heard from Centrelink.
One of the most important prequisites when applying for a job with Centrelink is that you must be a frigging idiot!!!

There are endless stories of how Centerlink has caused grief for people who rely on them for pensions that they are by law entitled too. System errors are often blamed, but the IT Systems only work with Input from the Humans using them, more often than not it is a human problem. Training of the centerlink service officers (or whatever they call themselves) does not stop the careless input of information. I could make this a very long story about my own recent attempt to apply for an age pension, however I will not bore everyone with the details.

A girlfriend who had worked at centerlink for many years told me that a request for information about a case from a local MP would be enough to cause alarm in any office of centerlink that it was directed to, so I took her at her word and wrote a lengthy letter of complaint to our local member.
Wow, did that make a difference. the manager of the office took over my interview and discovered the errors that had been made, showing the service officer what had been done wrong and how to change those errors. I received an explanation of the errors made and an apology, to no avail I might add, it was determined I was not eligible due to my husband still working full time but then, to be honest I had expected that outcome. The manager (of that office) admitted that she had received a very short but terse phone call from the MP that I had made the complaint too, her words apparently, were "Fix it or I will come in and do it myself" Apparently that branch lived in fear of that particular MP ever coming in for whatever reason. Useful information to know.

 

[mylittletibbies]

When my hubby first retired Centrelink told him he would have to apply for a UK pension or risk losing his Aussie one. This he did and we kept Centrelink in the loop all the way through. He duly received a part pension from the UK and we informed Centrelink immediately and nothing happened, his payments remained the same. Six months later we got a bill for just over $6500 that they said had been overpaid by them due to amounts received from the UK. Go figure. We tried to fight it on the basis that they had been told everything and had the figures six months prior but all to no good, they reduced that amount of pension he received until the "debt" was repaid. A short time later we received an extra payment due to an earlier short payment. At this point we threw our hands up in horror, does anyone at Centrelink actually know what's going on? It turns out his debt was more like $600 than $6500 but of course the stuff up wasn't theirs, they had done nothing wrong, he had reported it wrongly (?). The fact that he gave them all the paperwork from the UK didn't count in their calculations!

Of course Centrelink is never wrong, when they stopped our pensions and then reinstated them after our MP contacted them there was no explanation, no apology, nothing.
What I would like to know is what actually happened to the 3 Assets & Income forms we had submitted, these forms have all our private information, bank account details, property details, what happened to them??? Obviously not Centrelinks mistake.

 

[I'm Mal]

We know all too well here at the SDC how hard it can be for Australian seniors to make ends meet.

So what would you do if you were suddenly hit with an impossible-to-miss letter which demanded the repayment of $65,000? And the letter wasn’t just from anyone, it was from Centrelink. It’s frightening to even consider.

Rosemary Gay, a 76-year-old pensioner from Ballarat in Victoria, faced that nightmare when a letter from Centrelink warned her that she had to pay back the staggering figure – and she only had two weeks to do so.

View attachment 12181

The royal commission is currently hearing testimonials from impacted Australians. Image Credit: Shutterstock

The letter claimed that if she didn’t make the payment within two weeks, the government would start taking it out of her pension. The sum she was requested to pay was more than three times her annual salary.

As a part-time receptionist who had worked 14 hours a week, she earned less than $20k in a single year.

'It turned my life upside down. It was just sheer terror that I owed a figure which was just such a huge amount, that I had never earned that much money…How could I owe that much money and I had to come up with it in three or four weeks?' Gay said.

Unfortunately, it’s a story that’s all too common in Australia right now. In 2020, it was determined that the government’s robodebt system had wrongfully recouped more than $750 million from approximately 381,000 people.

Rosemary Gay spoke about her experience as a part of the robodebt royal commission, which is currently taking place in Brisbane.

The commission is hearing from affected individuals from all over Australia, as they give horrific first-hand accounts of unjust debt collection. There have been multiple extremely distressing accounts from victims, including stories of spiralling depression, money taken from family businesses and the forced sale of homes.

Speaking to the royal commission about her experience, Gay said she made $17,436 as a part-time receptionist between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011. However, on October 12, 2016, she received a debt notice for $64,998.17, something she said left her with little hope.

'All I could see was that I may be faced with selling my home and losing everything that I had worked for in my 70 years and I just saw it all going away instantly,' she said.

Centrelink claimed that discrepancies between Gay’s reported income and the amount registered with the Australian Tax Office had resulted in Gay being overpaid.

'The data that I provided to them of my earnings would be exactly the same as what would be contained in my group certificate in my tax return at the end of that financial year,' she said.

Ms Gay thought the whole matter would be resolved quickly, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

'I presumed that once I'd confirmed that (amount) was in my group certificate, that would be the end,' she said.

'That they would correlate that to be the same as what I had reported to them, and expected that would be the end of it.'

Gay said she was shocked and angry that Centrelink had caused her 'such a traumatic experience’.

'It was a very dark period of time for me and one that is very difficult to relive,' she said.

Key Takeaways

• Rosemary Gay experienced ‘sheer terror’ after receiving a letter demanding she pay back the $65,000.
• After two reviews and two months, the correct debt Rosemary owed was determined to be just $120.33.
• Rosemary had been employed part-time and was paid around $22 an hour, so her annual salary would never have reached $65,000.
• The federal court ruled the practice of using Australians’ annual tax information to establish welfare debts unlawful, and it is believed to have wrongfully recovered more than $750 million from 381,000 people.

It took two reviews, two months, and a lot of sleepless nights until she was told that the correct debt was only $120.33.

Members, if you or someone you know has been impacted by Robodebt, then please check out the websites of NotMyDebt and the Financial Rights Legal Centre.

NotMyDebt, a group founded by Lyndsey Jackson, was created to help victims of Robodebt. She said people she spoke to were 'facing homelessness' and 'worried they were going to get in trouble and lose their kids'.

We would be remiss not to acknowledge that the royal commission is still an ongoing investigation and we will do our best to keep you up to date with all the latest information.

Former Coalition ministers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter are expected to front the commission next week.

You may remember Tudge’s 2016 A Current Affair interview where he stated, ‘We’ll find you, we’ll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison.’

You can watch the clip here:


We wish Rosemary and all those impacted by the robodebt system the best.

Members, what are your thoughts on this story?

This is just another made up political BS story by the Australian lying party and their gullible supporters.

 

[Macarj]

When someone works and received centrelink payment, this than not declared, than this person runs into trouble. The $65000 will be an accumulation of several years and you have to get legal advice.

That doesn't account for her because she declared all her income

 

[Klaus A]

It was declared.

The only income I can see is her last year of income before pension age. She is asked to pay back her pension. Did she make a taxreturn?, did she earn anything after? and, and,and. There is to many variables to talk about this case, but someone did a mistake.

 

[mylittletibbies]

The only income I can see is her last year of income before pension age. She is asked to pay back her pension. Did she make a taxreturn?, did she earn anything after? and, and,and. There is to many variables to talk about this case, but someone did a mistake.

The only income I can see is her last year of income before pension age. She is asked to pay back her pension. Did she make a taxreturn?, did she earn anything after? and, and,and. There is to many variables to talk about this case, but someone did a mistake.

Did you go to night school and can't read in the day. It clearly stated that a review discovered that her debt was only $120.33, so I would think that blind Freddie could see that the mistake was made by Centrelink, pure and simple. How could you possibly owe them more than they had paid you. You didn't happen to work for Centrelink at some time did you??
Just asking.