Robo-debt saga 'breached govt guidelines'

Privacy advocates have accused Centrelink of an "incomprehensible" breach of regulator guidelines during the so-called robo-debt recovery program.

The saga, during which Centrelink used information from the tax office in an automated system to raise debts, has been widely criticised and is the subject of a Senate inquiry.

More than 200,000 people were affected and at least one in five debt notices issued were incorrect, according to evidence at previous hearings.

Kat Lane, the former chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation, on Wednesday told the inquiry the government had failed to follow best practice guidelines from its own regulator.

More stringent rules under data-matching legislation did not apply unless a tax file number was used in the process, she said.

"There's no doubt that we have poor privacy legislation in Australia," Ms Lane told the hearing in Sydney.

"We really need to improve on this so that the citizens in Australia have trust and confidence in the confidentiality."

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner described its guidelines as best practice.

Ms Lane said they had been "comprehensively breached" by Centrelink and it was "incomprehensible" for the government to ignore them.

"Those guidelines should have been mandatory," she said.

"Everyone who was the subject of the Centrelink robo-debt debacle would feel like they had absolutely no control over anything."

The inquiry will resume on Friday with a hearing in Perth.