The Federal Government has started issuing overseas travel bans to target welfare cheats trying to go on holidays or flee the country.
It is the latest attempt by the Coalition to crack down on people who have rorted the system, either through fraud or through not paying back money they were inadvertently overpaid.
Human Services Minister Michael Keenan said there were debts totalling more than $800 million, owed by more than 150,000 people, across the country.
Departure Prohibition Orders (DPO) have been used for more than a decade to target people who fail to pay child support, and their use has now been expanded.
More than 20 travel bans have been issued so far.
“So if you go to the airport, and you owe us, say, a couple of thousand dollars, or tens of thousands of dollars, then we don’t believe that you should be able to go on an overseas holiday, for example, if you owe us money because you’ve got overpayments from the welfare system,” Mr Keenan said.
“We will stop you from doing that, and that use has already saved us significant sums of money.”
The Federal Government has already begun charging interest on outstanding welfare debts, arguing previous approaches have been far too lenient.
Mr Keenan said the measures would only be used on significant debts, where previous efforts had been made to recoup the cash.
“We’ve tried every possible way to get them to repay that money, or to start to repay that money, to enter into a plan to repay that money, but they’ve completely ignored us,” Mr Keenan said.
“This is the tool that we use, essentially, as a last resort.
“We would’ve contacted them on multiple occasions — phone calls, letters and emails, and they would’ve completely ignored us.”
The first order was issued last month, stopping a person from New South Wales from travelling overseas on business when they had a debt of about $10,000.
That person has since paid off a significant chunk of that debt, and entered in to a repayment plan for the rest.
In another case, a Victorian with a $60,000 debt was hit with a travel ban, and has since begun paying back the cash.
The Federal Government has faced fierce criticism for its so-called robo-debt recovery program, where people have been targeted through automated messages to repay debts.
It is understood the threat of travel bans will not extend to those circumstances.
“We know this government is woeful when it comes to actually pursuing debts with people,” Labor frontbencher Catherine King argued.
“We had the robo-debt scandal where people in fact did not have debts at all and were absolutely hounded by this government, and then only to be put through the ringer to find out they didn’t have debts at all.
“The government would want to be very, very careful that it knows absolutely that these people do have debts, that this isn’t another debacle in the making from a government that seems entirely incapable of running any government programs.”
