Energy giant AGL disputes $25m fine for wrongly taking welfare money from hundreds as ‘excessive’
Energy giant AGL is disputing a “manifestly excessive” $25m fine for using the Centrepay debit system to wrongly take welfare money from hundreds of vulnerable Australians.It argues that a judge should not have used the massive financial penalty to try to “provoke some attention” from the company’s board and executive leadership.Late last year, the federal court imposed the hefty fine and excoriated AGL for wrongly taking money from 483 welfare recipients via Centrepay, the scandal-plagued, government-run system that allows automatic diversion of social security payments to essential services, like electricity bills and rent.A Guardian Australia investigation last year revealed deep flaws with the system, including that some of Australia’s biggest electricity retailers had used Centrepay to continue receiving welfare money from the pockets of departed customers long after they left.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news emailIn AGL’s case, the company used Centrepay to receive and retain an average of about $1,000 from the welfare payments of 483 former customers between early 2016 and late 2020.
The customers had paid their final bills and owed AGL nothing.The failure occurred despite AGL previously being warned about using Centrepay to receive money from former customers.The 2013 warning prompted AGL to fix its systems, only to then inexplicably abandon the fix in 2016, allowing the practice to resume and continue undetected for four years.The federal court found AGL’s conduct breached national energy retail rules 16,000 times and imposed the $25m fine.AGL then publicly apologised to affected customers and said it was “disappointed that this issue occurred”.
Earlier this month, however, AGL filed an appeal against the decision, disputing its liability and the severity of the fine.Court documents obtained by Guardian Australia show AGL has argued the $25m fine was “manifestly excessive”.The appeal will argue the judge was wrong to find that the penalty was required to “provoke some attention from those on AGL’s board and executive leadership team to focus more closely on these issues” and “seek to effect necessary cultural change within AGL”.The judge, the appeal argued, was also wrong to only consider AGL’s “size and financial position” when deciding whether a $25m fine would be oppressive.Sign up to Afternoon UpdateOur Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionIt argued the judge should have had regard to the fact that AGL was not “motivated by financial gain or potential for financial gain” and was wrong to conclude the company had not done all it could to return the money to affected customers.
AGL declined to comment on the appeal, saying only:“AGL has closely reviewed the Court’s judgment and decided to appeal [against] the judgment to the Full Federal Court.As the matter is before the Court, we will not be making any comments at this time.”The Australian Energy Regulator, which brought the case, also declined to comment.Financial Counselling Australia co chief executive officer Dr Domenique Meyrick said AGL should “do the right thing” by the affected customers and withdraw its appeal.The court previously heard that AGL, when it finally detected the problem in 2020, did not apologise to customers or offer to compensate them, something one senior executive conceded was wrong.
Instead, it sent a letter to welfare recipients that appeared to blame them for the mistake.“We noticed, after you left us, you failed to update your Centrepay arrangement,” the letter began.
‘I stripped away this caricature that I created’: Pamela Anderson on makeup, activism and gardening
The star of Baywatch and The Last Showgirl answers questions from Observer readers and famous fans including Stella McCartney, Liam Neeson, Ruby Wax and Naomi KleinPamela Anderson, makeup-free and beautiful in a floral Westwood suit, is making a fuss of my dog. My dog likes her. I’m not a particular believer in the idea that animals are great character judges but, in this case, me and the dog are aligned. I like Anderson too. She combines openness with a kind of vulnerability, and you warm to her immediately
On my radar: Shon Faye’s cultural highlights
The author on an obscene drill track, a writing retreat off the coast of Naples and her love of Almodóvar filmsBorn in Bristol in 1988, Shon Faye studied English literature at Oxford University and trained as a lawyer before turning to writing. She worked as editor-at-large at Dazed, and has contributed to publications including the Guardian, Vice, Novara and Vogue, where she writes the Dear Shon advice column. She hosts the Call Me Mother podcast, for which she interviews LGBTQ+ trailblazers. Faye’s bestselling first book, The Transgender Issue, was published in 2021; her second book, Love in Exile, about the politics of romantic love and relationships, is out now on Allen Lane. She lives in London
Nine working-class creatives on class in the arts – and how they made it
British artists have said the UK’s unique cultural output is under threat unless more is done to improve access to their industries, after analysis showed that almost a third of major arts leaders were privately educated. The Guardian spoke to visual artists, directors, classical musicians and playwrights about their views on class and the arts, and how they got managed to get established.“We have to get around the instinctive reaction to working-class accents a lot of people have, which is that this is somebody who’s either funny or dangerous. We as writers and producers and directors can help by not slipping into that – so that if we want a quick shorthand for ‘this person is dangerous’, we give them a broad working-class accent. Or ‘this person is going to say funny, stupid things’, we give them a working-class accent again
The Guide #179: How National Theatre Live brought the magic of the stage to the cinema
Last month I went to the National Theatre to catch The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s campy, farcical comedy. But unlike other theatre visits, this time I was surrounded by a number of large cameras.This was not due to some crisis in audience etiquette, but because I was watching the live-capture of the onstage performance. As I was enjoying Ncuti Gatwa’s Algernon pretending to play piano in a dazzling hot-pink dress, production teams in a number of trucks outside were frantically working to ensure the performance would be optimised for cinema screens across the world.This is, of course, the great operation of National Theatre Live
Working-class creatives don’t stand a chance in UK today, leading artists warn
Artists, directors and actors have raised the alarm about what they describe as a rigged system preventing working-class talent thriving in their industries after analysis showed almost a third of major arts leaders were educated privately.The creator of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight, the director Shane Meadows and the Turner prize winner Jesse Darling were among those who spoke to the Guardian about what was described as a crisis facing the sector.They spoke after a Guardian survey of the 50 organisations that receive the most Arts Council England funding revealed a disproportionate number of leadership roles were occupied by people who were educated privately and those who went to the universities of Oxford or Cambridge.Almost a third (30%) of artistic directors and other creative leaders were educated privately compared with a national average of 7%. More than a third (36%) of the organisations’ chief executives or other executive directors went to private schools
Who is ‘working class’ and why does it matter in the arts?
In recent years, a string of academic reports have shown in stark terms just how elitist the arts have become over the last four decades. The proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s, according to one piece of research, while another study found fewer than one in 10 arts workers in the UK had working-class roots.Sutton Trust research released last year found the creative industries were dominated by people from the most affluent backgrounds, which it defined as those from “upper middle-class backgrounds”, while a Netflix report claimed working-class parents did not see film and TV as a viable career for their children.Guardian analysis has found that almost a third (30%) of artistic directors and other creative leaders were privately educated, compared with a national average of just 7%. More than a third (36%) of the organisations’ chief executives or other executive directors went to private schools
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