A jobseeker is calling for an overhaul to the way suspensions are handled after his Centrelink payments were suspended while he was in hospital recovering from brain surgery.
The Albanese government is mulling an overhaul of the employment services system following a damning parliamentary review that criticised the mutual obligations system, which can suspend jobseekers’ welfare payments if they do not fulfil tasks such as attending meetings and submitting job applications.
Under the current regime, hundreds of thousands of people have their payments suspended each year due to what the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss) has described as an “oppressive automated systems” that advocates argue cause stress, exacerbate poverty and can make it harder for people to find work.
Mark*, a Victoria-based welfare recipient, had his payments suspended by his job agency in April last year. At the time he was also homeless.
A letter from Services Australia, seen by Guardian Australia, says Mark’s jobseeker payment was “stopped from 14 April 2023 because you did not go to, or were late for an appointment arranged by your provider on 13 April 2023”. There is no regulation requiring employment agencies to speak to people before suspending their payments.
The payments were suspended despite Mark lodging a medical certificate with Services Australia, saying he had been unable to fulfil his obligations due to surgery to remove a brain tumour at a Melbourne hospital on 10 April.
“I ended up in hospital after the operation and then got a text message from [the job provider] saying they’ve cancelled my payments, which was really frustrating,” Mark said.
He says because the medical certificate took several weeks to process, he was cut off before it could be approved. It took him six weeks to get his payment reinstated, as he was recovering from brain surgery and experiencing a high degree of confusion, he said.
“Technically, I was in hospital, but I was homeless. I was staying in short-term accommodation,” Mark said.
“So I thought, ‘Jeez, that’s all I need to have that cut off. How am I going to pay rent anywhere? Buy food?’ It was just a kick in the guts I didn’t really need at the time.
“I had to try then, to call them back, then call the manager and it just became a drawn-out process.”
After hospital, Mark went to stay with his sister in regional Victoria while he recovered. She helped him contact Services Australia and apply for a medical exemption, but he said he should not have been cut off in the first place.
“I think it’s overreach,” he said. “[Services Australia] have been given too much authority to cancel people’s payments without proper due diligence.”
He says he is grateful for the medical exemption now, but when he needed support at the start “it just wasn’t there”.
“You’re not thinking clearly, you’re on a lot of medication,” he said. “You just think I just need this to restart again. And it was a real battle because I couldn’t really concentrate and communicate that well.”
The Acoss chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, said the number of suspensions was “unconscionable” given the findings of the robodebt royal commission.
“Each month more than 80,000 people are threatened with loss of the income support that barely keeps them fed and housed, often due to oppressive automated systems that can make it impossible for people to meet their compliance obligations,” she said.
Payment suspensions cause immense mental distress and place people already facing severe financial deprivation in an even more precarious situation, Goldie said.
“It is long past time to end this harmful practice,” she said, adding automatic suspension of payments should be stopped until the “deeply flawed” compliance and penalty regime was replaced with a fair system.
The parliamentary review into the government’s flagship employment services program, Workforce Australia, last year recommended that automated payment suspensions should cease and that only officials at Centrelink should have the power to suspend income support payments.
Guardian Australia approached the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (Dewr), the minister, Tony Burke, and Mark’s job agency for comment.
Burke’s office and the job agency did not respond and the department did not respond to questions about his specific case.
Last week a Department of Employment and Workplace Relations spokesperson told Guardian Australia less than 10%, or 28,283 of the suspensions, resulted in income actually being paused. The median suspension duration is four business days.
When asked this week what is being done to ensure all suspensions are valid, a spokesperson said: “The department works closely with all providers to ensure that client requirements are appropriate to their individual circumstances.
“We monitor [providers’] application of the Targeted Compliance Framework and continually engage with providers on how they are applying payment suspensions and demerits and take action where it is identified that compliance has been incorrectly applied.”
A spokesperson for Services Australia said if a jobseeker lodges an appropriate medical certificate with the department, they may be exempt from attending mutual obligation activities.
“If the medical certificate has not been processed prior to a scheduled provider activity, a suspension may be applied, however this will be reversed and income support back paid if the Temporary Incapacity Exemption is granted. This is usually within the same pay period,” the spokesperson said.
*Name has been changed for privacy
• This article was amended on 4 March 2024 to change a reference to “mutual obligation” made by Cassandra Goldie to the automatic suspension of payments.
