Thousands of Australians received an unwelcome Christmas present last year, after the government issued debt-recovery letters to Centrelink clients whose benefits, the letters claimed, had been overpaid.
Up to 1.7 million more letters are being sent out by the government as it makes good on its promise to improve the budget bottom line by trying to claim back some of the money paid out to the country's welfare recipients.
Federal Social Service Minister Christian Porter says the system is working 'incredibly well', and has managed to recover $300 million in overpayments since July. Others, particularly among those who have receive the letters, say the system is working anything but well.
The automated system links the annual income data supplied to the Australian Taxation Office with the payments that have been distributed to people through Centrelink. Rather than taking a fortnightly view of payments, as Centrelink does in determining eligibility, it averages out income over 12 months.
So a person who claimed benefits perfectly legally for six months, and then gained employment, could be incorrectly charged for 'overpayments'. It's then up to that person, not Centrelink, to prove that they haven't been overpaid.
While Porter says they have received only 276 complaints out of the 169,000 review letters sent so far, he refused to reveal how many were disputing the repayments. A Centrelink whistleblower told the Guardian they had reviewed hundreds of disputes, and found only 20 where the debts were genuine.
Those disputing the letters report trying to get in touch with Centrelink to resolve the issues, only to find it impossible to get through due to lack of customer service staff. Others have spoken of emotional distress as a result of repeated phone calls from debt collectors, and former Centrelink staff have spoken of dealing with people who were suicidal.
Many have called for the automated system to be scrapped, but the government is standing by it. One of the reasons for this may be that the system is doing just what it's designed to do — trying to force people away from welfare reliance by making it more onerous.
"Technology is far from neutral. It tends to create a framework which ends up conditioning people and limiting their possible options along lines dictated by the most economically and politically powerful."
One of the less discussed aspects of Pope Francis' environmental encyclical, Laudato Si, is its critique of technology as a 'neutral' tool for society. Technology, he argues, is far from neutral. In fact, technology tends to create a framework which ends up conditioning people and limiting their possible options along lines dictated by the most economically and politically powerful.
'Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race, that in the most radical sense of the term power is its motive — a lordship over all.' Technology isn't of itself evil, but it has a logic that makes us less human, diminishing 'our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one's alternative creativity'.
Relying solely on technology to solve problems — whether it's environmental problems, or problems of helping people out of poverty — removes consideration of other elements. As Francis writes, 'The specialisation which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant. This very fact makes it hard to find adequate ways of solving the more complex problems of today's world, particularly those regarding the environment and the poor; these problems cannot be dealt with from a single perspective or from a single set of interests.'
We're seeing these automated behavioural adjustment systems more and more in our modernised societies. Another example is the public transport system, which moved from a system where employees sell tickets directly to customers to one that places the burden on the customer to serve themselves. Instead of serving customers, employees of the system are now tasked with enforcing compliance. The system uses the fear of penalties, and public embarrassment from inspectors, to force people to navigate its technological complexities themselves — something that can be particularly difficult for the elderly and people with disabilities.
While on the surface, this seems a 'neutral' development — it's a good thing for people to pay for public transport, and it should be made as affordable as possible — it also has the effect of making the system less humane. There was a story last year of a Melbourne woman who was threatened with a fine because she offered her spare pass to a homeless person who was being harassed by inspectors. Other videos of inspectors harassing customers have emerged, taken by patrons who are tired of intimidating tactics used to enforce compliance.
The result — a system where both the enforcers and the passengers are dehumanised — is exactly in line with what Francis predicted when technology is used by those in power to enforce a set of behaviours. More importantly, these types of systems do nothing to improve the lives of the most vulnerable. A Victoria University report last year found that a large number of disadvantaged high school students in Melbourne were skipping school because they couldn't afford to pay for public transport, or the fines they'd received for riding without a ticket. What space is there in an impersonal system to consider the future of the young person who can't afford the bus to school?
One hopes the government might feel some voter pressure to wind back its current debt recovery plan, although given those targeted are generally among those with the least voice in the country that hope might not be well grounded. But the likely outcome isn't going to necessarily be fewer people in need, as they might hope, but a much more adversarial system, and a greater burden on those who are already vulnerable.
Michael McVeigh is the editor of Australian Catholics magazine and senior editor at Jesuit Communications.