The federal government has denied there are issues with Centrelink's automated debt recovery system.
Centrelink has recently been sending out thousands of debt notices to current and former welfare recipients.
The new automated data-matching systems introduced in July, is part of an effort by the government to retrieve about four billion dollars in welfare debt.
Changes to compliance processes see welfare records matched with other government data, including reported income information collected by the Australian Tax Office.
But many of the recipients say the new automated system is asking them to pay debts they don't owe.
Speaking to the A-B-C, Minister for Social Services, Christian Porter has defended the system.
" Since the start of the financial year, we've sent out a 169,000 review letters. These are not debt letters. These are letters which use automated cross-referencing information from teh ATO, to information recieved at Centrelink, which shows that there might be a discrepancy. They are polite letters which go to a welfare reciepient saying that an isue has arisen and there might be a discrepancy and we require some further information. And you can go online and do that in an easy and seamless way," he said.
