Welfare cheats not playing fare

THE man in charge of smashing the black economy believes some privacy laws could be dumped to stop dole recipients sneakily earning extra cash.

Black Economy Taskforce chairman Michael Andrew said welfare recipients were raking in extra income by moonlighting as Uber drivers and doing cash jobs. He said taxpayers were being taken for a ride by dole recipients who knew how to game the system.

Mr Andrew questioned whether some privacy laws, which stop information sharing between government agencies, should be scrapped.

“People are double dipping,’’ he said. “The welfare recipients are very smart. They know exactly what they have to earn or to clear before they lose their welfare benefits. “There’s a lot of Uber drivers on welfare (but) it’s very hard to trace them and we can’t identify individually who they are. The Government has so much information which it doesn’t use.”

Mr Andrew said many departments did not share information because of privacy concerns.