Centrelink exposes remote customers to fraud: study ABC Radio - AM - Friday, June 2, 2000 8:28 COMPERE: The Howard Government has been told that its social security agency, Centrelink, is exposing its customers in remote Australian communities to both fraud and exploitation. An Australian National University study has condemned Centrelink's practice of sending cheques to recipients in remote areas, rather than electronically transferring payments. The study's author, Neil Westbury, told Eleanor Hall it's an escalating problem the Federal Government should be doing more to address. ELEANOR HALL: You have no bank account where the government can deposit your social security funds. So instead, Centrelink sends you a fortnightly cheque. But, with no bank or even a bank agency in town, what do you do with a cheque? Well, according to Neil Westbury who has been researching just this question in indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, you�re forced to rely on a 19th century power game where the local taxi driver, store or pub cashes your cheque. And there are often strings attached, like requiring that you spend your money at their store. NEIL WESTBURY: Now in some circumstances, some unscrupulous traders charge fees for providing that service or, because there's low levels of financial literacy among many Aboriginal people, they�re not really aware of how much they�ve actually spent over the fortnight. And the only real way to resolve it is to ensure that Aboriginal people in fact get access to the same sort of banking services as everyone else can access. ELEANOR HALL: Reserve Bank figures on the exodus of banks from the bush show that branches are still closing at the rate of more than a dozen a month. The banks say they�ll replace the branches with bank agencies, but what's particularly worrying for remote communities where agencies were all the banks, provided in the first place is that even bank agencies have been cut back from over 8,000 to close to 6,000 over the last decade. Centrelink is acutely aware of the predicament this places the organisation in. And it was Centrelink's Alice Springs office in partnership with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission that paid for Neil Westbury's study. COMPERE: Eleanor Hall reporting. � 2000 Australian Broadcasting Corporation -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
