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Short filmTranscript
00:00The government come up with a new computer system.
00:27There won't be a human in sight.
00:34Robots were going to take over our jobs.
00:40The power of a government to reach into someone's life and create trauma.
00:47They were committing fraud against welfare recipients at an industrial level.
00:53Why are they chasing me?
00:55When is it ever going to stop?
00:59When you're fighting against this big machine.
01:02$11,303.
01:05There's no way you owe this debt.
01:08Nurses, teachers.
01:10They were put in jail.
01:12They lost their homes.
01:13They lost their marriages.
01:14Lost their lives.
01:15Was I the one that pushed them over the edge?
01:18I didn't want to be Ciara's mum.
01:20I just wanted to attend.
01:22How could it go on so long?
01:26How could they not know?
01:28We all just said, yes Minister, we'll do that.
01:30Yes Minister, we'll do that.
01:31I wasn't going to give in.
01:33I was not.
01:35To take on the government is a really scary thing.
01:38The courage of that needs to be celebrated.
01:42It was David and Goliath.
01:44I couldn't live with not speaking the truth.
01:48When will there be justice?
02:11Here we go.
02:12Wild.
02:13Yeah.
02:18Hey, morning.
02:22Hi.
02:23Just those thanks.
02:32Thanks mate.
02:33Cheers.
02:34It's busy.
02:35I'll take things.
02:37Sure.
02:38What have we got?
02:39Eucalyptus leaves, gum nuts, banksia and four red roses for perfume.
02:43They're gorgeous.
02:45Happy Mother's Day.
02:46I mean, you're not my mum, but you know what I mean.
02:50I am a mum, so thank you.
02:52It's alright.
02:53See ya.
02:54Bye.
02:55Like bees to honey.
02:57You're good.
02:58Just doing my job mate.
03:01Rhys was very quirky.
03:03He always liked to make people laugh.
03:05Loved his art, loved his music.
03:07One of Rhys's first jobs was the very upmarket flower shop in Melbourne.
03:13He loved being able to talk to the people that were coming in.
03:16He just really enjoyed that job.
03:19My name's Jennifer Miller and I'm Rhys Corso's mother.
03:24He was able to use his creativity quite a bit.
03:34He liked it to be a little bit different.
03:35He didn't just want to use flowers.
03:37He'd add weeds to it.
03:42He did a really beautiful job.
03:49We'd often talk to each other.
03:51You know, relatively regular basis.
03:56We always kept in touch.
03:58His work was never constant.
04:20The jobs that he did have were either casual and or seasonal.
04:25So at times he would have to be on Newstart.
04:40Hey.
04:41Hey.
04:42That was a long day, you poor thing.
04:45That was work.
04:47Oh my God, that was insane.
04:50Well, you've made lots of mums very happy.
04:54Brett was his partner.
04:57Gorgeous girl.
04:59They loved each other.
05:02They clicked well together.
05:04What's this?
05:05I don't know.
05:06It's a letter from Centrelink.
05:09They reckon only over ten grand.
05:10What?
05:11You don't, do you?
05:12No, I haven't been on that doll in years.
05:13Maybe they just got your file mixed up with someone else's.
05:14No way I can pay this.
05:15No way I can pay this.
05:16No way I can pay this.
05:17No way I can pay this.
05:18No way I can pay this.
05:24No way I can pay this.
05:25No way I can pay this.
05:26No way I can pay this.
05:27No way I can pay this.
05:32No way I can pay this.
05:33No way I can pay this.
05:39No way I can pay this.
05:45No way I can pay this.
05:58In 2016, I was just on maternity leave and I received a letter in the mail.
06:12Dear Miss Button, you need to confirm your employment income.
06:15This may result in a debt that you need to repay.
06:19Yours sincerely, Compliance Officer of Centrelink.
06:25The letter was slightly odd because I hadn't been receiving Centrelink for quite a while,
06:30but I had just registered my daughter's birth.
06:33And I thought maybe that was a process in order to get my maternity leave put through.
06:39When I called Centrelink to confirm my employment, the guy on the phone didn't give me any further
06:44information.
06:45He just riddled off everything that was in the letter.
06:48I said to him, I can't remember.
06:50He said, well, this is the ATO data.
06:53So, of course, I would agree with it because why would the ATO have incorrect information?
06:58I trusted him.
07:01I trusted him.
07:02I trusted Centrelink.
07:03Four weeks later, I got another letter in the mail saying that I owed about $11,100.
07:19And I was shocked.
07:24They gave me like a month to pay it in full.
07:27I had never heard of anybody having this experience before.
07:32When you are recently a mother, so you're learning how to be a mum, to a premie baby that has
07:39developmental delays.
07:42Navigating the maternal health visits, the doctor's visits, the mother's groups where you
07:47get to watch other women with their perfectly healthy babies that they're breastfeeding and
07:51you're sitting there going, she won't even take a bottle.
07:55And then having that debt looming over you, knowing that you have to do something about
08:01it quite imminently with no anchor is terrifying.
08:04It makes you feel like a failure.
08:25So before I start, I'm still employed by Services Australia.
08:31And I cannot say anything that's in breach of the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct.
08:41When I first started back in 2000, there were so many ways to help the community.
08:48So it was a really nice feeling.
08:50I wanted to feel value in what I was doing, that it was important to be able to serve those
08:57people that were most at need.
09:00People really didn't know where to go or what to do.
09:04And you could completely change their day, their life.
09:08It was around about 2015 that we first started hearing about the Robodet pilot.
09:19Compliance was going to be much more automated.
09:23Robots were going to take over our jobs and we wouldn't need so many compliance officers.
09:31We wouldn't need so many phone staff.
09:33Everyone would just go on and raise their own debts.
09:36Before Robodet, compliance was about doing the work correctly.
09:46Making sure that the debts were accurate.
09:49We'd look at the customer's record firstly.
09:53And then we would write to that employer saying we would like all the pay slips or payroll reports.
10:00So when I was ringing the customer, there were often quite reasonable reasons as to why
10:07sometimes people weren't correctly declaring their income.
10:11Once Robodet started, Centrelink were going to be sending out letters to everybody.
10:25And people would have to prove that they didn't have a debt.
10:30It doesn't think about anyone's individual circumstances.
10:35It's automated.
10:36So it treats everyone exactly the same.
10:39This felt like servicing of the customers was taken away.
10:44This just doesn't feel right.
10:47You were employed as a public servant to serve the public.
10:52Your job was to do the best thing that you could by the public.
10:56Rhys!
11:16Rhys!
11:21Rhys!
11:22Rhys!
11:23Rhys!
11:24Rhys!
11:25Rhys!
11:26Rhys!
11:27Rhys!
11:28Rhys!
11:29Rhys!
11:30Rhys!
11:31Rhys!
11:32Rhys!
11:33Rhys!
11:34Rhys!
11:35Rhys!
11:36Rhys!
11:37Rhys!
11:38Rhys!
11:39Rhys!
11:40Rhys!
11:41Rhys!
11:42Rhys!
11:43Rhys!
11:44Rhys!
11:45Rhys!
11:46Rhys!
11:47Rhys!
11:48Rhys!
11:49Rhys!
11:50Rhys!
11:51Rhys!
11:52owns the debt to prove their innocence so i had to prove that i didn't have a debt when i didn't
11:58even know how they proved that i had a debt in the first place i was stressed all the time
12:06i was not sleeping i was not eating i'd never been a person that wanted to
12:14wrought the system or you know claimed something that i wasn't entitled to
12:22ever since i was a little girl i always had this
12:25uncontrollable desire to help my community and just help people around me the reason i chose
12:32a career in nursing was because my mum is a palliative care and community nurse my sister
12:39is an icu nurse my aunties are all nurses so it's always been a very strong culture in my life
12:49the debt made me feel like i had let my community down
12:55that was probably the hardest part of the whole thing
12:58shits sorry that was probably the hardest part of the whole thing was feeling like i'd let everybody
13:04down
13:16before robo debt it would take months to get a file to a finalized debt
13:24there's a box which logs every time a public servant have tried to call the employer
13:31it was a deeply human driven process
13:37getting rid of the humans was the heart of robo debt
13:42they told the staff you don't investigate the file anymore
13:48the assumption was people will take the debt they won't query it our budget position looks a whole lot healthier
14:00we appreciate your patience and understanding
14:08your call is important to us and has been placed in a queue
14:13release you home
14:15kitchen
14:16we appreciate your patience and understanding
14:25we don't hold for over an hour centerlink
14:27an hour
14:28this happens every time i call them you can't talk to an actual human
14:33and they've got they've got this bloody awful music that plays over and over again i must have
14:36called them at least 10 times
14:38you can't talk to someone you can't explain that it's just a mistake and then there's this deadline
14:45please try again goodbye
14:48oh for fuck's sake i've been cut off i've got a total waste of my time
14:57reese had run me really really distressed
15:01so i flew down there and we spoke about this this letter my reaction was just forget about this for
15:09the moment because this is bullshit there's no way that you owe this debt
15:19oh come here you i said okay well
15:23your mum will sort it out as mothers do
15:27what people have to keep in mind at that point no one had heard about robo dead
15:38we were all in the dark reese hadn't heard about it so we were flying blind
15:45one one five oh finally
15:48um so there's been a mistake uh my son hasn't been receiving centrelink payments for over five
16:02years and um no word from you people and then these letters appear out of the blue he's you know
16:11submitted all his paperwork and his pay slips didn't you yeah so the first letter said that he owed
16:18ten thousand two hundred and eighty three eighty one um and then he got um one that said he owed
16:25seventeen thousand um are you disputing the amount owed
16:31i'm disputing that he owes anything
16:34fuck
16:37all right mate just calm down what are you going to do about it
16:40i told you to calm down
16:49jeez
16:52sorry about that
16:55um best thing for you to do is call the debt inquiry number
17:01i tried calling yeah and we're here now oh we don't deal with debt notices at this counter
17:07well i know you sent it
17:11call them they should be able to sort it out
17:15sorry i can't help he spent hours trying to call you people let's just call the number
17:24the system is useless thank you
17:26i'm colin taylor and i'm a retired compliance officer i was 32 years in the australian public service
17:49my last job was as the compliance officer in centrelink
17:55you find out the people's lives are just so complicated and just can't make assumptions about
18:01you know why someone's in a certain situation
18:05the idea of empathy is an essential requirement in my job
18:09my mother she was very socially minded
18:14it was just something that maybe came naturally i suppose when you're brought up that way
18:262015 i was in brisbane
18:29i was part of the compliance team that did data matching
18:33initially with robo debt there was a whole lot of debts that were going to go out
18:39that were fully automated so no human being had looked at these
18:44robo debt was raising a debt on the raw tax office data
18:50we knew that the raw data with the tax office was actually next to useless when it came to raising a
18:57debt you couldn't rely on it because the tax office isn't interested in whether you work
19:03six weeks there three weeks there four weeks there all they're interested in is what was paid in the
19:08financial year these were manufactured debts they didn't exist because we knew a discrepancy does
19:16not mean a debt it was almost like the letters were designed so that people wouldn't reply trust us
19:24it's a debt please pay i thought someone's got to have some humanity and understanding
19:30so i sent an email my concerns are that this directive will result in an increase in admin
19:39error waivers and unnecessary appeals it goes against duty of care and as a compliance unit
19:47we should not be the ones stealing from our customers we are being asked to ignore evidence
19:54that no debt exists and to collude in raising a debt when none should exist big bold letters and
20:01underline you are asking us to commit a fraudulent act
20:18there does need to be a strong welfare cop on the beat and i'll certainly be looking to do that
20:22and i think australians generally are quite happy to have a a system that helps people who are
20:27genuinely in need and deserve our support but what they won't cop just like they won't cop people
20:32coming on boats is they're not going to cop people who are going to rot that system scott
20:36marison becomes minister for social security just in the run-up to christmas 2014.
20:42what do i want to be about as minister is very clearly communicated to public servants fraud
20:51investigations and compliance interventions will increase by 900 000 over the next four years we're
20:57going after the cheats mr deputy speaker and we're going to stop those cheats and we're going to stop
21:01those rotters robert begins at what was a very ordinary corporate planning day in adelaide
21:12in the middle of 2014. at that planning day the department of human services managers
21:21are debating their plans for the year and the vibe that is in the air is very much around savings every
21:30year we look at the tax returns of everyday australians and out of this enormous pile
21:40we take 20 000 cases and we investigate those very closely and we generate debt
21:50why don't we take more from the pile they speculated what it would be like
21:57to process hundreds of thousands of cases a year and that was the very early beginnings of what became
22:06robo debt this system will pay for itself over time but what it'll also do is pay for itself by giving
22:13those who work in our system to crack down on welfare fraud and integrity issues the sort of tools
22:18they need to be an effective welfare cop on the beat in early 2016 scott marison is effectively promoted
22:27alan tudge is appointed minister for human services
22:31well g'day how's it going yeah it is pretty exciting for me i mean i got sworn in today as the new human
22:36services minister he must roll out the computer system that was promised the previous year and time is
22:45tight and the pressure is on
22:47in august in 2016 i took a role with the minister for human services alan tudge he was well known to be
23:05seeking to get into cabinet he had always been quite ambitious and creating media stories and i walked
23:12straight into a really really busy portfolio in human services he was absolutely a mediator i mean
23:17he really enjoyed the media uh as you might know i'm racing home now because my wife's going to be
23:23giving birth tomorrow morning so um it's a busy time in the touch house sold but it is exciting i was trying
23:29to balance having two children and a husband and a family life dog
23:35le shin le
23:38dogs are masculine that's stupid i'll take it up with the french
23:43the test is tomorrow yeah just give me a second there was a lot of personal challenges at that
24:00time as well as professional challenges i can be here next week for the parent teacher interviews while
24:05you're in sydney great can you just hang on i need to hear this and i'm away for the next two weeks
24:14i thought it was only one well it was it got changed
24:20you could just ignore it no i can't
24:24alan is betting his whole career on this thing there's just some people who aren't stepping up to
24:28the mark and he wants a bit more teeth if you like to encourage those young people
24:33i might need to travel in those two weeks honey i've already changed things once
24:37you could stay with rosie no you can't
24:44to be honest one of the reasons why i was interested in working for him because it was
24:48an opportunity to actually be more proactive as a media advisor and a good way to do that is to be
24:52seen to be having wins in the media for the government now whenever they try to throw you just
24:57keep coming back to the central argument efficiency efficiency efficiency and make
25:02sure you mention welfare cheats public hates welfare cheats a current affair interview was very much
25:09focused on sending a clear warning message out to people that the coalition is cracking down on
25:15welfare cheats good we'll find you we will track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you
25:23may end up in prison our thinking on it was that we wanted the australian people to support our
25:29welfare safety net and and that they would do so if they felt that the system had integrity especially
25:35as a coalition government we want to make sure that the scheme is running properly
25:38and that we are recovering debts that we weren't just kind of letting them go
25:41prior to the robo debt scheme we had a lot of different programs that were all about getting it right
26:00doing the work correctly and making sure that the debts were accurate right down to the last cent
26:11and then after robo debt took off that was raising debts that we knew were incorrect
26:22in the initial meeting there was so much tall you can't raise a debt if you know it's inaccurate
26:29i can remember walking out of that meeting and ringing my union person straight away going you
26:35just won't like this is just crazy you know this isn't going to really work
26:44each one of us were taken by our team leader into a one-to-one meeting
26:50she made it very clear that there was a direction that was being handed down from
27:00higher management and she said basically you've got three choices to do the job
27:08transfer or quit and i was pretty upset about it but i was going through a family breakdown
27:20whilst i was raising three children i didn't have the option or the opportunity to say well i'm going
27:26to quit because i needed the security i needed to be close to home because my children were still
27:32in primary school so i stayed and i did the job
27:35one day i was just at home and received a centerlink letter in the mailbox you owe us money
27:50i couldn't fathom it really surprised that i had a debt and a bit alarmed worst most
27:56absolutely soul-crushing news to get
28:13september 2016 we were seconded to go and check that the um fully automated debts were actually
28:20calculating it correctly and they wanted a group of experienced debt calculators and we were to do a
28:27manual calculation to see what we arrived at and compare that with what the system arrived at
28:34fully automated and what was obvious straight away was this was being duplicated the first three we
28:42looked at duplication both woolworths and big w one was the trading name and one was the group entity name
28:49one was there was an apostrophe missing and a pty ltd a human being looking at it quite clearly it's the
28:57same employer so we worked out what the debt would be if we didn't double up the same employer you know
29:04and the difference was probably about two and a half thousand and so we went to the supervisor and
29:10said well these debts are wrong you know and i'll never forget the supervisor there and i'll never
29:16forgive her for this she said well if you don't like it you can leave it seemed to be you're either
29:22for us or against us and if you're against us well watch out you know
29:32so i went back upstairs and i said you cannot do this to people and i said people will commit suicide
29:40the other team leader she said to me you're right colin but it's just gone too far it was this
29:52steamroller that was full steam ahead and who's going to stop it now
30:00we were the department of human services where was the humanity
30:10so i had to take her to the doctors
30:28we finished our appointment and i went to go pay
30:30and my card declined
30:40and i was i was in shock i couldn't even tell you how many times i apologized to the receptionist at
30:44the doctor's clinic and uh opened up my banking app and i saw that my account was overdrawn by eleven and
30:52a half thousand dollars so i got in the car and i called the debt collection agency he started his
31:03phone call so cold with me he basically treated me like i was a pariah he said well you've got a debt
31:09and now you've paid it
31:13and we were going over the bridge on the freeway and i said to him well why don't i just
31:17drive off the road i can't afford my rent i couldn't afford my bills i'm a terrible mom
31:26i'm a terrible partner because i can't contribute to anything i'm a terrible community member because
31:31i'm leeching off the system
31:35i felt hopeless and helpless and stupid
31:39he said we don't want you to do anything silly you know don't worry it's clearly a mistake we'll put
31:45the money back in your account tomorrow but the damage had been done because they were able to
31:53withdraw half a year's worth of wages from my account in an instant and i had no say in it
32:00that day i didn't want to be alive i didn't want to be ciara's mum
32:09i just just wanted to tend
32:15so
32:33reese did suffer anxiety he would have panic attacks
32:37i obviously was extremely concerned about his welfare
32:58you ever heard of dun and bradstreet
33:01is that a band
33:02they're the ones that are hassling me about the money
33:11what are you talking about
33:16they're debt collectors
33:30they're trying to garnish
33:32my wages
33:34they're going to take my car
33:36i thought that it's worth anything
33:38they're going to take my bike too and then i can't even
33:42get to work to make the money to pay them off
33:45they can't write this sort of thing to people
33:50and they're texting me too
33:52is this so not okay
34:08i don't know what's going to happen if i can't pay them
34:11i don't know what's going to happen if i can't pay them
34:16they're going to send me to prison
34:20i hate these people
34:33good afternoon services australia ravi speaking
34:43g'day um i'm on a disability support pension
34:47i was given two robo deaths
34:50one was five thousand three hundred and fifty two dollars the other one was six thousand and eleven
34:56dollars so two totaling about eleven thousand dollars i'm on the poverty line i don't know
35:01whether i can afford anything more than ten bucks a fortnight
35:10we weren't really trained to deal with the level of trauma that the customers were coming through with
35:16either they were very distraught very upset very emotional
35:22and then the next call that you take within that 30 seconds later
35:28someone's swearing at you telling you that they're going to find where you live and
35:34threaten yourself and your family it was really hard
35:39when you've got someone that confess that they're they're feeling suicidal or have talked about self-harm
35:46it was quite stressful and i knew that the debts for the majority were incorrect
35:53and i'm like how would i feel if that was me i'd feel terrible and that really played on me mentally
36:04i started going to the pub and my lunch breaks it would make the afternoon calls a little less traumatic
36:11i started drinking in my lunch breaks buying a bottle and taking it home in the end i end up with
36:21an alcohol addiction that i'm still battling with today my children watched me just become less
36:31available depressed that i couldn't change it guilty and shame that that there wasn't anything that
36:40could really be done to make people understand that it needed to stop
36:53thousands of welfare recipients have been overpaid to the tune of more than 700 million dollars but
36:59the government says it must be repaid while most people do the right thing the unfortunate reality is
37:06that some people deliberately defraud the system in one case thrives in a limelight
37:14that's because you've briefed him properly doing my job
37:20the view was that hey there's millions of dollars in human services that is just
37:25going to people who aren't entitled to it the end of the day if somebody does owe money to the government
37:30they have to pay it back one in every three dollars of the federal budget is spent on
37:35welfare and by 2020 the system's forecast to come well briefed apparently seriously
37:45all the things i should have mentioned
37:50as a media advisor your phone doesn't stop
37:52it can be made worse if you're working for a minister like i was who who is constantly
38:00looking for those opportunities in the media and constantly following and reading the media and
38:04following twitter because then as soon as something's breaking he was calling me straight
38:08away and going hey have you seen this hey have you got a response to that hey can you get me on
38:14that opportunity in that tv program 80 percent of people's welfare payments are now placed onto
38:19an account which is only accessible via that card i can remember one instance when i was at home
38:26and i went into the bathroom
38:31my phone just rung and rung
38:39it was the minister saying well where were you why weren't you picking up your phone
38:44and i said look i was actually going to the toilet and he was like no i need to take the phone in the
38:49bathroom with you
38:55i got to the point where i'd just take the phone with me everywhere
39:04i remember seeing a press release from alan tudge's office that was going to start debt
39:09recovery processes at a rate of 20 000 per week when previously had been running at about 20 000 per
39:17year i thought how on earth are they going to achieve this and i just it just didn't match with
39:25the reality of what i knew and understood about the way that welfare recipients were claiming money and
39:31the kind of you know the kind of numbers that were involved in in deliberately taking money from
39:36the system or trying to root the system it just needed to be covered
39:46as a journalist i had the power to have a really significant impact giving a voice to voiceless
39:52people and disempowered people and and seeking to understand what's happening to them and how
39:56they're being impacted by policy and government decisions is a really critical part of journalism
40:02i think i got to kind of reconnect with that that purpose
40:15first story that we published is the first story in the media about robo debt
40:25and what happens from there is we get a trickle of welfare recipients getting in touch with us
40:32and that soon becomes a flood we're absolutely inundated with people coming forward
40:47how am i going to pay this if i have to pay it um where am i going to find this money it didn't make
40:52sense to me that i could get a 14 to 16 thousand dollar bill spend a lot of time on the phone with
40:57sends me trying to figure out how they figured it out you're ashamed i hid it i didn't tell anybody
41:03makes you start questioning everything because you think you're always in the wrong it caused me to
41:09sort of like have a bit of a breakdown in a way
41:16when you're experiencing such a tremendous debt you you can't help but reflect on yourself and your
41:22actions and go where did i go wrong what did i do how did i get myself into this i feel so lucky that
41:27i have a support network around me and get support and emotional support from my husband
41:33but i always think what about those people that can't that has social anxiety or has phone anxiety
41:39and can't pick up the phone and call the deck lifters do they just let them take the money out
41:43of their account and go oh well i guess i'll sleep on the street you know what about the person
41:47what about the person that's escaping a domestic violence situation what about the person that's
41:51living with a disability who can't access a phone or can't access centrelink independently and what
41:58about a student who's new to the world you know a naive teenager that thinks it'll all blow over did
42:04anyone at all consider them in their architecture of this program this is the system working as it was
42:15intended we are doing this in an organized fair and procedural way all through this period the
42:23government is basically rubbishing our reporting saying it's wrong they don't understand what they're
42:28reporting they don't understand how the system works we haven't changed anything we've always
42:34raised debts in this manner to me that was kind of like a red rag to a bull like because i could
42:40see exactly how it had changed i knew that things were different so in those first few weeks there's
42:51us reporting it some stories in the abc crikey and a couple of other smaller outlets
43:01but there is this section of the media that completely ignores it and that is mainly
43:07the news corp tabloids and the broadsheet the australian it's not unexpected that that would
43:12happen but it was frustrating in a sense because the truth was right there in front of everyone
43:19in front of every reporter in the country
43:26it was definitely my job to try and minimize the amount of negative stories that were appearing in the media
43:36that was all he talked about to me was you know there's another story today why haven't
44:02you spoken to that journalist have you got our side of the story in there you know i worked really
44:08hard to make sure that at least if there was going to be a negative story that it was least balanced
44:13we can certainly feed a couple stories to the tabloids
44:16oh we're the good guys
44:22oh i've been pursuing the youth sector social media uses yet
44:28yeah okay yeah i can be in the office in 15 minutes
44:33minister thanks for joining us on hack
44:42pleasure on a scale of one to ten how flawed is your new system
44:47i don't think it's flawed at all what we're trying to do is just to ensure that
44:52people get the right payment that they're entitled to no more and no less we sort of saw an opportunity
44:59where we've got a bunch of kind of intellectual left-wingers who are really outraged about this
45:03program but we're able to sell a different story to the mainstream media about we were recovering
45:12debts because we were trying to protect the integrity of the welfare system our information
45:17that came back to us was that the system was working as it should have been we're hearing stories
45:23from young people who are now being chased by debt collectors how early do you call the debt collectors
45:29in so the debt collectors come in as a last resort when a person with the debt is no longer receiving
45:36a central link payment where we've been unable to contact the person and they've failed to make or
45:42maintain a recovery at range
46:04by the stage in december reese felt like he was being victimized he felt like am i a criminal here or he
46:10would have been like a deer in a set of headlights and not knowing where to go
46:17and that's what happened
46:21we couldn't make head more tale of where this was coming from that was the start of everything
46:35that was the day to start and finish your christmas shopping today was it trees tinsel and tans at this
46:57particular point just before christmas we're talking about people who in many cases are
47:02disadvantaged or vulnerable maybe five to six grand doesn't sound like a lot of money but actually for
47:08for many people that's kind of the difference between having money in your bank account or not
47:12or being able to buy presents for your kids at christmas or you know being able to buy uniforms for next
47:19year or in some cases being able to pay rent put food on the table so it was it was devastating it was
47:26devastating to people
47:39over the christmas period reese didn't say a great deal to me about the harassment that he was receiving
47:46it was actually brett that advised me that you know he was getting harassed
47:56he was just threatened with losing absolutely everything
48:16he felt like he just had a burden on his shoulders continuously and that
48:20he just wasn't going to get anywhere and he didn't know which way to turn
48:31canberra being the bubble it is the culture around welfare recipients was
48:37probably one of a lack of a lack of empathy
48:40we just didn't have any insights into what it felt like to be receiving a government benefit
48:55i first started to hear or feel that something wasn't going right when we had phone calls from
49:03people with debts coming into the minister's office but i also ran into a a younger woman in the
49:10the ladies bathrooms
49:14i need your help um i got this debt notice from way back when i was a student it doesn't make sense
49:23i've checked okay i've got all my pay slips from my casual jobs at uni every one of them
49:29there shouldn't be any debt but they're saying i owe thousands i mean i always told them what money
49:35i'd earn i provided pay slips i did all the things you're supposed to do well someone like you
49:40shouldn't have one of those debts you're not exactly routing the system right yeah i can't tell my family
49:49or anyone this is so
49:51it's been embarrassing
49:56could have been a mistake has to have been
50:01i'll look into it could you yeah that'd be amazing thank you
50:14definitely that conversation with that young woman in the bathroom was the first time that i had
50:19serious doubts because this is a person who is extremely well educated she had kept all of her
50:26pay slips and all of her documentation because she had all of those records it was sorted out really
50:31quickly and she and she didn't have a debt i was worried because i was like well
50:39she has all of that information and that's lucky but what about the people who don't
50:43and when i started to try and look into it even further i was told very firmly that we're looking
50:53after this this is the policy side of it you're the media advisor you just stick to what you're hearing
51:01from the media team in the department i couldn't see how that was right
51:06there was something about it that was just that felt wrong
51:27it felt strange when the first time somebody said you're a whistleblower or something what do you mean
51:32you feel that you have to put yourself at risk so that the truth comes out empathy i just didn't have
51:40any left you just do what your minister wants you to do they did not acknowledge that people were
51:46vulnerable they did not acknowledge that people were suffering i was not going to pay them anything
51:53and i was not going to let them push me into killing myself
52:23if you or someone you know require immediate assistance or support contact lifeline on 13 11 14
52:41or visit lifeline.org.au or suicide callback service on 1300 659 467 or visit suicidecallbackservice.org.au
52:52or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636 or visit beyondblue.org.au or talk to your local gp or health professional
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