Exclusive: Court documents obtained by Guardian Australia show appeal argues judge was wrong to decide penalty was needed to ‘provoke’ leadership attention

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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.

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