The corporate regulator repeatedly warned Services Australia that it should review and consider removing more than 100 companies from a government-run debit scheme that allows early access to welfare payments.with the Centrepay system, including its continued use by rent-to-buy appliance companies that had previously been sanctioned by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for predatory conduct.
Services Australia declined to answer Guardian Australia’s questions about steps it had taken to review the 122 rent-to-buy companies. A spokesperson said this was because it was currently reviewing the entire Centrepay system. “I’ve raised concerns that businesses that Asic has concerns about have not been removed from Centrepay. This still appears to be the case,” Pratt said.
Greens social services spokesperson Penny Allman-Payne said the mismanagement of Centrepay was allowing exploitation. She called for an independent investigation of the system’s failings. “The ongoing failures of Services Australia’s Centrepay system are inexcusable,” she said. “This system has allowed big businesses to rip off people who are struggling to get by, many of them First Peoples.”
The letter alleged that, in one case, a 26-year-old Aboriginal woman in Tennant Creek had been forced to reach out to a financial counsellor for a food hamper for her two children and was later discovered to be paying hundreds of dollars in Centrepay deductions to local retailers, including a rent-to-buy scheme for home appliances and a local bus transport service, leaving her with a bank balance of zero on the day she sought relief.
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