The Coalition government is going to target more than 3 million of elderly and disabled Australians with its controversial Centrelink "robo-debt" campaign, Parliamentary documents show.
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The mid-year economic forecast tables published last week shows the government has booked savings of $1.1 billion from data-matching the aged pension and another $400 million from the disability support pension.
The move will bring more than 3 million more Australians into the sights of the data-matching program, which uses an automated system to match information held by Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office and calculate overpayments.
But the policy has been beset by errors and has been hugely controversial with many of those targeted for debt recovery saying they are being hounded by commercial debt collectors for money that they do not owe.
Have you been hit with an age pension robo-debt? Contact us ps@canberratimes.com.au
The data matching effort so far has been concentrated overwhelmingly on mostly young people who have received the dole or Youth Allowance, although evidence is emerging that students have also been hit heavily.
But the supporting tables to the government's mid-year financial and fiscal outlook, published on Thursday by the Parliamentary Budget office, reveal that Coalition policy is to massively extend the data matching effort to the more than 2.5 million age pensioners and about 800,000 disability support pensioners.
"Relative to the 2016-2017 budget, policy decisions are expected to decrease expenses on the age pension by $1.1 billion to 2019-2020 primarily due to measures to enhance the integrity of social welfare payments including expanding and extending data-matching activities with the Australian taxation office," the document reads.
The papers also reveal that the government believes it will slash spending on the disability support pension using the same methods.
Both the Department of Human Services and the office of the Human Services Minister Alan Tudge have been contacted for comment on Tuesday.
More to come