Kelly was sitting up in her hospital bed. Through the haze of heavy medication she was trying to tell the woman at the end of the phone line – an officer at Centrelink – what had happened. On 26 March, the 43-year-old had started experiencing psychosis and two weeks later, on 8 April, she was admitted to Macquarie hospital in New South Wales.
“I was completely out of my mind,” Kelly says. “When I had the psychosis, I thought I was being poisoned and people were watching me.
“I couldn’t even tell you my name. I didn’t think my name was my name, I was completely just in another world.”
While Kelly was unwell her sole source of income – her jobseeker payment – was suspended because she had missed a face-to-face appointment with her provider, CoAct.
In March, Services Australia paused most of the payment cancellations because of concerns the IT system might not have been operating lawfully.
But every month, payments for tens of thousands of recipients are still being suspended, government data shows. Between January and April this year, there were 157,680 payment suspensions.
In February, the highest month for suspensions this year, for every minute, more than one recipient had their payments paused.
Advocates allege the suspensions may be unlawful and have called for the federal government to overhaul the mutual obligations framework, where jobseekers are penalised if they don’t fulfil tasks such as attending meetings and submitting job applications.
In Kelly’s case, her hospital doctors wrote four medical certificates but all of them were rejected. Kelly says Centrelink told her that psychosis wasn’t a diagnosis but rather a “medical symptom” and as such, did not count.
So she called her job coach at CoAct and was told to attend a face-to-face appointment to get her payment restored. Kelly’s driving licence had been revoked while she was under the Mental Health Act, so the hospital social worker drove her to the provider’s office.
She says that in the meeting, her job coach suggested she look for eight jobs a fortnight, instead of six, but her manager kept her plan as it was.
“I was getting my cognitive availability back slowly at that point. But I still didn’t have it totally together, I was stuttering, and I was still trying to focus.
“I signed the document I couldn’t even read, and left crying.”
Kelly spent almost another week in hospital. During the two weeks, she had no income and was unable to pay her rent.
Kelly’s is not an isolated case. Last year, Guardian Australia revealed a Victorian-based welfare recipient had his payment suspended while he was in hospital after surgery to remove a brain tumour. He was also homeless.
This week, the Commonwealth Ombudsman confirmed it had expanded the scope of its investigation into the legality surrounding payment cancellations, although it would not provide any more details.
In March, the secretary of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, Natalie James, said she had “reasonable concerns that the system may not be operating in accordance with the law” and extended the pause on cancellations.
Antipoverty Centre spokesperson Jay Coonan says the question of legality “also surrounded payment suspensions”.
“We’ve heard of cases of people in ICU having their payment suspended,” he says.
“We’ve heard of people who have been on their deathbed and their families have been working with social support in hospitals to try and stop this from happening.”
In April, there were 877,355 registered people on jobseeker, with the majority (625,140) receiving the full rate of $781.10 a fortnight.
Coonan says suspensions are stressful and could further throw people into poverty, even when they aren’t in hospital. He wants the government to pause the whole system.
“The issue with mutual obligations is that these suspensions are [allegedly] happening unlawfully, and the department does not really, quite frankly, give a damn.”
In a response, department spokesperson Hank Jongen said Centrelink had apologised to Kelly and had “worked with her to resolve this matter”.
“We’re committed to helping people access our payments and services whenever they need them, and we encourage anyone in a situation like this to please contact us so our staff can help,” he said.
A spokesperson for CoAct said it “takes full responsibility for the error and sincerely regrets the impact it caused”.
“When the customer lodged a formal complaint through CoAct’s customer feedback channels, immediate steps were taken [to] rectify the issue,” the spokesperson said. “CoAct acknowledged the error and put a corrective action plan in place. The customer has been informed of the actions taken to resolve the matter.”
For Kelly, three more certificates from her own psychiatrist outlining her psychosis were sent in an attempt to get her mutual obligation paused while she recovered – the last one was finally accepted after she lodged a complaint.
She is now recovering, but the episode and bureaucratic hurdles have left her exhausted and depressed.
“People seriously look down on Centrelink recipients,” she says. “But anyone can find themselves needing their help.”
