Bai and Secretary, Department of Social Services (Social services second review)

This matter concerned a review of decisions by the Secretary of the Department of Social Services to cancel the Applicant's carer payment and carer allowance, and to raise a debt for overpayments of these benefits. The Applicant arrived in Australia in 2010 and was granted carer payment from December 2012 and carer allowance from September 2012. The carer supplement was added in July 2015. The Applicant contacted Centrelink in December 2015, reporting that she had separated from her partner in July 2014 and had stopped providing care for him at that time, attributing her failure to notify Centrelink earlier to being busy with divorce proceedings.

The legal issues before the Tribunal were whether the Applicant's carer payment and carer allowance were correctly cancelled, whether she had been overpaid for the relevant period, whether the overpayment constituted a debt owed to the Commonwealth, and whether all or part of this debt should be written off or waived. The Applicant maintained that she had never left the marital home and continued to care for her partner, despite providing information to Centrelink and the Federal Circuit Court indicating a separation date of July 2014 and a change in her residential circumstances.

The Tribunal found that the Applicant had failed to satisfactorily explain the inconsistencies between her claims and the information she had previously provided regarding her separation and living arrangements. Her explanations for the discrepancies, including blaming translators, a migration agent, her own memory, and anger, were not accepted. The Tribunal noted that the Applicant had provided information to Centrelink and the Federal Circuit Court that was inconsistent with her assertion of never having separated from her partner. Consequently, the Tribunal determined that there was no basis to waive the recovery of the debt under section 1237AAD of the Social Security Act 1991, as the Applicant had failed to comply with her reporting obligations by not advising Centrelink that she was no longer caring for her partner. The Tribunal affirmed the decisions under review.