Student Assistance Act 1973

Subject to subsection (2), the Secretary must waive the right to recover the proportion of a debt that is attributable solely to an administrative error made by the Commonwealth if the debtor received in good faith the payment or payments that gave rise to that proportion of the debt.

Subsection (1) does not allow waiver of part of a debt that was caused partly by administrative error and partly by one or more other factors (such as error by the debtor).

Subsection (1) only applies if:

the debt is not raised within a period of 6 weeks from the first payment that caused the debt; or

if the debt arose because a person has complied with an obligation to provide information or documents to the Department under this Act, the debt is not raised within a period of 6 weeks from the end of the period within which the person was required to comply with that obligation;

If:

a debt arose because the debtor, the debtor’s partner, or the debtor’s parent or parents underestimated the value of particular property; and

the estimate was made in good faith; and

the value of the property was not able to be easily determined when the estimate was made;

For the purposes of this section, a proportion of a debt may be 100% of the debt.

In this section:

if the person is not an adopted child—a natural parent of the person or someone of whom the person is a child because of the definition of child in this section; or

if the person is an adopted child—an adoptive parent of the person.