Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This year's budget reduces the Department of Human Services' average staffing levels by 1,280 people. This is on top of last year's budget, which reduced staff by 1,180. That's 2,500 staff gone from Centrelink across the country. It is no surprise, therefore, that in an area like mine people are walking through my door looking for support to tell us their stories about dealing with Centrelink. It's amazing that this government doesn't seem to understand the compounding impact of not just a reduction in staffing levels, in something that's supposed to be about customer service, but on top of that they are also introducing their robo-debt scheme, which causes more work. Now we're going to have early learning and child care; we're going to have all of those families reporting to Centrelink. We're increasing the workload and decreasing the staff. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that this is going to have a negative impact on efficiency and productivity. In an electorate like mine, that's exactly where we're seeing it. We know today that this government is completely fiscally irresponsible, and what's happening at Centrelink shows us it is also managerially incompetent.

Let's have a look at some of the things coming out of my electorate. On 31 March, the median processing time for the age pension was said to be 49 days. But Judith, in my community, has been waiting 131 days. She is still waiting for her application to be processed—after 131 days! This government not only wants to legislate to stop you getting a pension until you're 70; if you're 65 it wants you to wait until you're 70, just waiting for Centrelink to process the data! Duncan, in my community, has waited 161 days from submitting his application before it was processed. Does the minister think it's reasonable that people applying for a pension, including our seniors applying for a pension, are waiting these lengths of time? Does he think it's reasonable that they have no income for that length of time?

If I go to youth allowance we have a similar story. This government's been doing some interesting things in the university sector, like cutting it, and they're looking at the introduction of $100,000 degrees. When they can't get those things through, what's next? People in my electorate are waiting 125 days for youth allowance payment. Courtney is waiting 125 days for her youth allowance. What does that mean to families? What does that mean to first in family who are going to university? What it means is, don't worry about the debt you're going to incur; don't worry about the fact that you have no guarantee of what that debt will be by the time you finish your course; she won't even be able to get there. She will have to give up university because Centrelink are understaffed and can't deal with the workload. Abdul waited 81 days from when he lodged his application for it to be processed.

This not good enough. These are our best and brightest, heading off to university. The system says they should get support. Does the minister think these processing times are reasonable?

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