Denison Independent MHR Andrew Wilkie said on Thursday that he has now had hundreds of anxious people contacting him over the letters. 

About 170,000 of the letters have been sent out across Australia after discrepancies were found between Centrelink and Australian Taxation Office information. 

Mr Wilkie said something needed to change. 

“I’m the first to say that over-payments should be clawed back, I think everyone would agree with that … but there is no way in the world that it could be justified that 4000 people a week are getting debt notices for debt they do not own,” he said. 

“I have now received at my office literally hundreds of approaches from people by phone, by mail, by email, people who have walked in.

“This is a disaster in the making.” 

Earlier this week, Labor announced it would push for a Senate inquiry into the issues, something that Mr Wilkie said he would support.  

Federal Department of Human Services general manager Hank Jongen stood by the online system and said it was designed to identify differences between ATO and Centrelink payment records.

He said the system was performing the tasks as intended.

“The Online Compliance Intervention takes advantage of data from the ATO and when a mismatch between that data and the data reported to Centrelink is identified, the payment recipient is asked to clarify the information,” Mr Jongen said.

“In the past, staff did this work for the recipient. This was very time consuming and meant that a relatively small number of overpayments could be addressed.

“Some of our staff believe that intensive one-on-one management of recipients is always required. As with other online initiatives in Centrelink, this intensive support is still available for those recipients who need it and complex cases.”