Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Staff of the Department of Human Services plan to commence four days of industrial action on 5 December, taking a stand against the government's unfair and ideological approach to workplace bargaining. Rather than seeking to fix the blowouts in Medicare processing and Centrelink waiting times and the increasing number of unanswered calls, the government is pursuing policies that are making the situation worse. It is time they acknowledged the importance of these services and, rather than letting it worsen the impact on ordinary Australians, actually worked to fix these problems. The government could fix the problems of waiting times at Centrelink and Medicare by sitting down with the workers involved and negotiating a fair and reasonable pay offer. That is what they should do immediately.

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