Centre Unhinged

​For some odd reason I find this fascinating.

Centrelink, Australia’s social welfare cash agency, has new software that is sending out debt notices based on prior over-payments.

The maths in the software is incorrect and does not conform to Centrelink’s own rules.

It doesn’t allow for periods of employment and non-employment. It just uses annual averages, and thus incorrectly sends out large debt notices to people that are often penniless, and sometimes ill-equipped to handle the complexity of the issues.

Could such a basic error be caused by utter imbecility, or was it done on purpose? Who knows. This government appears devoid of all sense of humanity and this is seeping down into the agencies.

But I do know this. The unfairly treated recipients of these debt notices aren’t going to be treated well.

I’d like to see one of them declare bankruptcy, and then sue the agency for damages after showing that the debt notice was usurious and incorrect.

Which makes me wonder why they don’t treat unemployment benefits as they do HECS.

One could just rack up a debt and then incur an extra tax increment when employed, one that works to repay the debt.

Oh hang on, we do that already, in reverse. We pay tax and if we’re ever unemployed we benefit from the national insurance scheme. Well we don’t actually; many people simply can’t stomach Centrelink.

The benefit of the HECS debt approach is that it would turn recipients into customers and thus curb Centrelink’s mad and bad ways.

They could even build this debt into an estate tax; the government could recoup all unpaid benefits from the estate as a primary charge in all circumstances.

None of this would address the issue of multi-generational unemployment. But it wouldn’t make it worse either.

Usefully, the gig economy will rise to prevent people being unemployed. Diving an Uber, delivering for Deliveroo, freelancing on line, and other cash earning options; these will allow people not to panic when they lose that job.

Maybe the concept of unemployment needs to be replaced with the concept of a minimum wage. Which Finland is just trialling.

My idea. If one works a minimum number of documented hours then your earnings are topped up if they fall below some threshold, with no debt.

If you work less than the minimum number of hours, then you get unemployment benefits and it’s debt.

Companies of course would rush to underpay people, so I’d make corporate tax rates linked to pay rates in companies, or earnings rates in gig companies.They’d figure it out.

It all sounds very tiring. I’ll leave it to people that care more than me.