The man, who did not wish to be named, had earned less than $12,000 in 2014-2015 when he is alleged to have racked up over half that in debt to the government agency.

He joins a chorus of criticism of the Department of Human Services’ automated debt recovery system, which is accused of issuing thousands of false debts over the festive period. 

The mass mail out has been charged with causing extreme stress and anxiety over a time when few services are open to deal with concerns.

The recent university graduate had worked up to five part time jobs, including a month full time work at a university, but had also gone through periods of unemployment.

When he queried the debt, he was told by a Department of Human Services employee that the system was set up in such a way that “it did not understand casual employment”.

“That (debt) would have been all my savings and more,” he said.

“When I received that I was absolutely devastated.”

Centrelink appeared to have averaged out his yearly income based on a single month where he worked full time without Centrelink benefits, he said. 

“What Centrelink has done is average out my income over the entire year … instead of looking at what I’ve declared and using that information to make sense that I wasn’t working at some places at that particular time.”

Had he not found out how to challenge the debt, Christmas would have been ruined, he said.

“The woman I spoke to obviously sympathised and tried to reiterate as much as possible that this was a policy decision from the top.

“The feeling I got with them is that they were having a lot of issues with this.”