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Local media have dubbed the recipients ‘the grateful dead’.

Deceased suppression is available in Australia via the Australian DMA’s Do Not Mail File, on which deceased persons are flagged.

But Australia’s Tax Office did not use it when it mailed 16,000 deceased people payments of up to 900 dollars (700 US) each earlier this year.

The gaffe has cost the Australian state an estimated 14 million dollars.

The money was part of a 42 billion-dollar stimulus package passed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government in February, designed to give cash handouts to all eligible Australians who lodged a tax return last financial year.

Prisoners and 27,000 Australians living abroad were also sent money.

Mark Roy, CEO of The REaD Group, owner of The Bereavement Register, described the gaffe as "a bad blot on our Antipodean cousins' otherwise exemplary data handling copybook".

He said: "It appears that Westminster isn’t alone when it comes to government data handling cock-ups. Canberra really has no excuse. Deceased suppression files are available in Australia, which would have prevented Kevin Rudd's people erroneously sending A$14 million to dead taxpayers."
 
Jo Bell, commercial director Millennium, the company that markets the Mortascreen deceased suppression file, said the Australian government had set "a terrible precedent".

"If the government doesn’t use suppression, why should marketers? Really they should have procedures in place to stop this kind of thing happening. It’s expensive and sends the wrong message to consumers and business alike," she said.

"If anybody saw any of the dead out there spending up big at Harvey Norman or Coles or Woolworths, please let me know," ABC news quoted Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham as saying.