To the Editor
It is so much more! Dear Editor, It is so much more than ‘opposing the project which they say will run through their properties.’ (NCN Article 5.07.2023) It is about democracy! Generally, ‘community consultation’ has been a sham – ‘ticking the box’ for AEMO, not the community. $10 paid to complete an Ipad sur vey – bribery. There has been no transparency…. questions still remain unanswered. Compulsory acquisition – what a sickening ring those two words make! Just for a moment imagine 28,000 kms of transmission lines running from southern Victoria to Northern Queensland – imagine the materials needed, are they going to be imported from our exports? Are they coming from a country which is the biggest annual emitter of planet warming greenhouse gases? How clean and green is that? Is Australia simply becoming a milk bar? Do we simply buy in and sell on to our citizens? During Covid we felt and experienced the need as a nation to become self sufficient and therefore the need for more manufacturing in Australia – as Covid subsides, sadly it seems, so does the need for self sufficiency. Like me, these transmission poles and wires have a life span –‘they’ say 60 years. What happens then? The question was raised at Charlton’s TCV (Transmission Company Victoria) community ‘meeting’ (AEMO faces) last Wednesday evening and the answer was ‘probably scrap metal’! This is all in the name of transitioning to clean energy. Almost forgot the 17 truck loads of concrete for one transmission pole … 17 truck loads for one transmission pole! There are solid alternatives being put forward for a better way which present day infrastructure can facilitate, a cheaper way, a way with far less environmental impact and thus a lesser impact on human well being.
• Cont. page 3.
Robodebt’s ‘crude and cruel’ system brings whistleblowers to their knees ROBODEBT was one of the worst acts by a Government or a government department in our time, but to actually understand the depth of the corruption and the human cost that occurred we must read the reports and letters from whistleblowers. The Royal Commission into the scheme has concluded the system was ‘crude and cruel’ worked by averaging data from the Australian Tax Office and distributing debt notices to over 443,000 welfare recipients. But many Centrelink employees risked their jobs to appeal for the scheme to be seen as corrupt. One whistleblower testified that Robodebt turned his once-rewarding job into a nightmare and he expressed “gnawing frustration towards highups, who allegedly seemed blind to issues arising from the scheme”. Another reported that Age pensioners who are exempt from having termination payments assessed were having these payments assessed as earnings by the Online Compliance Intervention (OCI) process (which was the official name which has now become Robodebt). Debts were then being raised fully on income that Centrelink already had evidence of via the customer's pension claim documents that was fully non assessable income. “This means we are knowingly raising age pension debts for exempt income which applied over a whole year leaving many pensioners with massive debts in the thousands of dollars. We are not permitted to check or fix this and even if we ever are given permission to fix it thousands of age pension reviews go through without a human ever seeing it and therefore raise incorrect debts for age pensioners anyway” this whistleblower reported. Recovery fees were designed to penalise customers after they provided “no reasonable explanation for under-declaring”. Although the policy declared that customers must first be contacted Qld and assessed as not being vulnerable to have fully A 4217 understood their declaration requirements along with having no reasonable excuse and their actions must be found to have1 been deliberate in 800 652 284 the act of being overpaid. Under OCI recovery fees F were simply applied in most cases even if a cusE contacted or spoken to a staff tomer has never been member. The whistleblower said “there is an option for customers to negate the fee online in the review process but this almost never occurs”. Another statement was that “within the organisation it is well known that there errors in the Ted are Whillier program and compliance officers are directed to C ignore incorrect debts without being permitted to correct them. When we report Matt errorsTrickey it falls on deaf ears or we are told that the issue is already known C and we must not make any attempt to fix the error or our work will be returned as wrong and we will have to cancel the corrections”. And yet another example was “there are dozens more examples and directions given to staff that ensure that customers even in the review appeal stages do not achieve a correct outcome. For example, under appeal if we see the customer has checked the box that says they agree that they earned that amount for that employer and we can also see full well that some of that customers' income included exempt allowances we are not permitted to correct it. The direction is given because we must accept the customers' acceptance of the income. Customers however simply do not know that some of their income is exempt. We are struggling daily with our consciences and pushing back against our leaders every single day. We are telling the OCI helpdesk over and over that what we are doing is wrong. Nothing changes and grad-
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18 Napier St., St. Arnaud, Victoria 3478. Phone: (03) 5495 1055; Email: ncn@iinet.net.au
Editorial
St. Arnaud, Charlton & surrounding districts
N.C.N. INFORMATION The North Central News is 100% locally owned, independent newspaper, established in 1864. With an ABC audited circulation of 1,650 copies, and an estimated readership of over 4,250 throughout the Northern Grampians and Buloke Shires.
ually I can see officers simply accepting that they are powerless to change anything, powerless to help customers have accurate outcomes and powerless to stop this process. I see these reviews every working day and I am horrified at what I am being directed to do. I am risking my job sending this information in the desperate hope that exposing such a corrupt and unjust system might just make a difference. Please help”. These are the words of Centrelink employees who were true to their conscience. There are many like them. Humans are themselves the best intervention against corruption, but other humans responding Qld of highlightto their complaints made that process A 4217 ing the corruption far too long. If we are going to tackle corruption we must have a better system that 1 800 652 284 protects and responds to Fa whistleblower in an acceptable amount of time. It is not only the lives E of the recipients that were falsely charged amounts they did not owe that were so cruelly affected, but also those employees on the ground who tried to grapple with their consciences every day. We say thank you to those men and women.Ted Whillier
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No. 10097
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ACROSS 2 Individual part 8 Flower 9 Call up 11 Rebukes 13 Insect 15 Highest mountain 17 Drugyielding plant 18 Is afraid 19 Time in grammar 21 Weird 24 Restrict 25 Multitude 28 Old sailors 31 Gather for oneself 34 Nothing more 35 Acting with strong rough force 37 Remedies 38 Daring undertakings 39 Smallest amount 40 Impressions left by blows 41 Waistbands
DOWN 1 Titanium dioxide 2 Mournful songs 3 Fencing weapon 4 Concur 5 Young hares 6 Assumed attitude 7 Dissolve 10 Stanza 12 Eggs 13 Equal 14 Giver 16 Snow runner 20 Components 22 Sovereign 23 Comforts 26 Kimono sash 27 Valleys 29 Entertains 30 Formal agreement 32 Insect 33 Remains of pencils 35 Electrical unit 36 Eggshaped 37 Yield
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