The hunt for ‘anomalies’ in the JobSeeker compliance system will take months and the Department of Employment is unable to say if it is legal. By Rick Morton.
Commonwealth ombud Iain Anderson has launched an investigation into potentially illegal welfare payment cancellations.
The Australian Council of Social Services referred the cancellation of about 1,000 income support payments to the ombud in December.
This is the second time the government has been accused of illegally cancelling payments since robodebt.
The reason, in this case, is a suspected misunderstanding of the Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF).
In a statement, Anderson said Services Australia and the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) would be investigated.
“Noting these matters and the potential impact of the TFC on highly vulnerable people, my office will be examining the TCF to consider if cancellation decisions are being made and implemented in a manner that is lawful, fair and reasonable,” he said.
“[DEWR] has also reported to me about reviews it is carrying out or commissioning on how the TFC has been operating.
“Given a parliamentary inquiry has previously examined and delivered recommendations to overhaul the TCF, my office will not seek to duplicate the inquiry. We also do not intend to duplicate the department’s own reviews, although we will monitor these.”
The TCF lays out the warning, demerit and punishment system used to compel most welfare recipients to look for work or study. Failure to meet these “mutual obligations” leads to warnings and eventual payment cancellation.
The TCF has been in place since 2018, but mutual obligations have been a bipartisan endeavour since their introduction by then-prime minister Paul Keating as “reciprocal obligations” in the early ‘90s.
TCF changed when Workforce Australia was created in 2022. This opened some new pathways for people to meet their mutual obligations through new combinations of activities.
It also gave secretaries the discretion to consider someone’s personal circumstances before cancelling payments. In effect, the secretary can prevent the cancellation of payments to people in financial stress. But reporting by The Saturday Papersuggests DEWR was unclear about what this meant for internal processes.
Anderson said he was announcing the investigation because he believed it was in the public interest.
“My office conducts its investigations in private and I generally do not make a public statement in the absence of a formal report,” he said. “However, in the current circumstances, I believe it is in the public interest to share my plan to investigate this matter.
“I will report further once our investigation is completed.”
While the Commonwealth ombud’s attempts to investigate illegal welfare payment cancellations during robodebt were severely hampered by the Department of Human Services, Anderson may be better equipped than his predecessor.
A Senate committee recommended increasing the ombud’s powers on Monday.
The proposed bill includes a statutory duty for agencies to assist ombud investigations and a clarification of the extent of their entry powers.
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