Senior police officer to lead welfare fraud taskforce to be established by Government

The Federal Government is set to announce a crackdown on welfare cheats by appointing a senior police officer to lead the attack on welfare fraud.

Human Services Minister Marise Payne said the Government is working with the Australian Federal Police to appoint an officer to lead a special taskforce.

The taskforce will target people who have undeclared income, with pensioners and people who receive the Newstart allowance and disability support to face income audits.

"This measure is targeting people who received an income support payment and have income that they have received through employment that they have not declared to the department," Ms Payne said.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the crackdown was expected to net substantial savings for the budget.

"We think that up to $1 billion a year can be defrauded because people are not being upfront about their income, so it's important that we ensure that people are being straight with us," he said.

As well as the Newstart allowance and disability support, affected income support payments will also include youth allowance, parenting payments, and the age pension.

Payments such as Family Tax Benefit and paid parental leave are not included.

Ms Payne said in a statement her department was bound by law to recover money where people had received more than they were entitled.

"This measure will allow the department to uncover overpayments, recoup debts and investigate deliberate welfare fraud," she said in a statement.

"Individual cases may result in debts of between $1,000 and $50,000."

Greens senator Rachel Siewert said it was ironic the taskforce was announced in the same week it was revealed that half the calls to Centrelink have not been answered and addressed.

Ms Siewert said the Centrelink system was overly complex and most of the errors that occur are administrative mistakes by Centrelink staff or genuine mistakes by recipients.

"The Government's choosing to address this as fraud rather than addressing the complexity of the system, acknowledging that the system is failing and choosing to blame income support recipients," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-24/senior-police-officer-to-lead-welfare-frau...
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I would have no doubt that some are fiddling the system, to get some personal advantage.
That should be investigated & dealt with!

However, the fiddling of the system goes a lot further, with many high Income/Asset individuals & businesses, also fiddling the system.

The difference being, that there is a lot more money involved at the Top End of town & the Politicians, from both major party's, have structured legislation to allow "additional leeway" to the Top End and neither major party appear to have the required "intestinal Fortitude" required, to undo what they have done!    

THIS MUST CHANGE, as we are now heading into uncharted waters and "New Measures will be needed, for these New circumstances"!!!
 

In relation to call waiting times at centrelink,  Some people don't seem to understand how a government dept works, now what government dept. do you think is going to get more taxpayer funding?, the one that has no waiting time or the one that has a long waiting time.

Obviously the one with the long waiting time and that is why it is super important to keep them unemployed bums waiting.


Now transfer this scenario to private industry and what business is going to going to go out of business first? the one that leaves their customers waiting on the phone forever or the one that responds quickly to their call.

As you can see the govt. dept. operates in a different universe, a universe where no customer service actually rules.

more people cheat than we give them credit for pansi...

some even get into the 6 figure market with what they have to pay back...it isnt something we should pretend isnt happening...its like those who trash govey houses they make me sick...its all take with a lot of people these days..

I see where the Martin Place inquest has started.. lets not forget Monis was on welfare for something like 20 years...

We need to get rid of welfare cheats but at the same time the Liberals are always quick to take action in getting a small amount off of the relatively poor but will only talk about taking action at the other end of the scale where the big money can be easily saved.

What's new?  the LNP has always suffered the delusion that they feed to an equally deluded public that there are about a million dole bludgers who are out there rorting the system.

Some people are utterly stupid enough to actually believe that is true.

They attack people like a woman in hospital for an operation who forgets, under drugs and pain, to report her income for the fortnight on time, and they call her a cheat..... put her through the courts...

Bunch of overpaid criminals the damned lot of them....

They oughta shake Fat Hank upside down and get some coins out of his pockets for rorting the public by pretending to be the king pin of Centrelink.

I'd estimate his fat cat position at worth no more than $150k as a senior clerk.

No wonder this country is a ruin.

Ex Dame Pansi wrote on May 25^th, 2015 at 5:37pm:



No government will ever do that - the 'job creators' are a protected species, and are also mates who they share a nice scotch with sometimes.

But those 4-5 genuine dole cheats... wow - that must be the tip of the iceberg despite the current information sharing between government departments.

I work part-time on pension and used to get my figures pretty accurate.  I think I've had a pay rise - I was about $10 short in my estimate last fortnight.

The Guv can check my bank accounts at any time and see what I've got... at year's end, my tax package will automatically put in my pension, pay, bank interest, and everything else.

So - how does this amazing sytem miss all these 'dole cheats' out there?

Simple answer?  It doesn't - and this is just another beat-up by a desperate government to feed the delusional snobbery of a few voters who might be silly enough to vote for this lot or their Opposition, and who assume that they are the pinnacle of civilisation while Social Security recipients are the nadir.

Had a neighbour like that - no compunction about doing a cash job - but oooooh!  All those 'dole bludgers' out there ripping off the taxpayer!  He'd drink to that every day!

I   D   I   O   T   S  !

cods wrote on May 25^th, 2015 at 7:14pm:


you don't understand the tax system Cods.  it wasn't as if Frank Lowey just kept a few things of his tax return.  with what he does, the taxation issues are extraordinarily complex and not clear - hence lengthy court cases.  The ATO took a lesser amount to avoid the expense of going to court and perhaps losing.  They lost big time against Paul Hogan.  Just because someone settles doesn't mean they are guilty. Especially in non-criminal matters, settling something out of court makes good financial sense sometimes even if you are completely innocent.

President Elect, The Mechanic wrote on May 25^th, 2015 at 6:01pm:



Why?