Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill now be read a second time.

This bill amends legislation as a result of Services Australia being established on 1 February 2020 as an Executive Agency under the Public Service Act 1999. The bill also makes related governance changes. Schedule 1 to the bill changes current references to Services Australia, the Department of Human Services, or the secretary of that department. The references will now be to the Executive Agency of Services Australia, or the CEO of Services Australia. These amendments will ensure that legislation continues to support service delivery and administrative decision-making by Services Australia as a new executive agency.

Schedule 2 to the bill makes governance changes relating to Services Australia. The CEO of Services Australia will perform the existing statutory roles of Chief Executive Centrelink, Chief Executive Medicare and Child Support Registrar. Those three offices are currently filled by separate Senior Executive Service officers in Services Australia.

Services Australia was established to play a key role in more efficiently and effectively delivering the services that Australians rely on. Having the CEO fill those key statutory offices will sharpen the service delivery focus of Services Australia and simplify lines of accountability.

The bill will amend the Human Services (Centrelink) Act 1997 to prohibit a person from using the name Services Australia (for example, as part of a business name) if that falsely implies a connection to Services Australia or Australian government service delivery.

The bill will amend the Human Services (Centrelink) Act 1997 and the Human Services (Medicare) Act 1973 to require the Chief Executive Centrelink and Chief Executive Medicare to comply with any limitations on sub-delegation imposed by the delegator. For example, when the Secretary of the Department of Social Services delegates a power to the Chief Executive Centrelink, the secretary could direct that the Chief Executive Centrelink must not sub-delegate that power to any Services Australia employee below a certain APS classification level.

The Chief Executive Centrelink and Chief Executive Medicare could also independently give directions when delegating or sub-delegating a power. For example, the Chief Executive Centrelink could delegate a particular power generally to all Services Australia officers above a certain APS classification level but direct that officers can only exercise that power if it's necessary to perform the functions of their specific role.

In many respects this bill provides the formal foundations for Services Australia.

The Prime Minister has made clear his intent for the establishment of this new Executive Agency: excellence in service delivery for the Australian government.

In August last year, the Prime Minister stood in the Great Hall of Parliament House, a stone's throw from this very chamber.

He addressed the nation's Public Service asking for them to refocus their effort on serving Australians.

He said:

So as we gather here in this Great Hall, I want to remind you of a poignant feature of this house of democracy.

This is one of the few parliamentary buildings in the world where you don't have to walk up steps to enter it.

Our Parliament isn't a Parliament over the people or above them, but one that people, that Australians, can freely and easily approach.

The Prime Minister said he wanted this to be a metaphor for how Australians see their government.

In my portfolio this has provided a beacon for how we want to deliver services for Australians.

When the Prime Minister announced the establishment of Services Australia, it wasn't simply a rebrand or a rename.

We wanted to make it clear to the public, and the Public Service, that the priority of government is excellence in service delivery.

He said we want government to be easier for Australians. We want it to be much easier,

because government services are the services Australians rely on and we want them to access those services, as easily as they can and in as informed a way as possible.

So this bill puts in place the foundations of an agency that will be and has been there for Australians in need.

We could not then have known just how vital this focus would become.

In the face of the coronavirus we have had to take extraordinary steps to protect Australians.

As we have insulated Australians from the impacts of the virus we have had to make significant economic and social sacrifices.

These changes have seen Australians forgo those quintessential Aussie pastimes like hanging at the beach, going to the footy or down to the pub.

But perhaps most significantly and most tragically these actions have resulted in a demand for government social supports not seen in this country since the Great Depression.

Indeed, the immediacy and scale of this demand is surely without precedent in the history of our Commonwealth.

As Minister for Government Services I have seen how Australians have reached out in record numbers and how Services Australia has delivered with a relentless focus on serving their fellow Australians, living out the expectation set by the Prime Minister when he outlined his vision for the Public Service only months ago.

In the face of significant challenges Services Australia has been a steady support for Australians in need.

Throughout the coronavirus crisis, staff from Services Australia have been working around the clock—literally 24/7—to deliver new and improved income support measures and to fast-track the Australian government's coronavirus financial support.

You only need to see the beautiful pictures of chalk drawings outside our service centres thanking our service centre staff to recognise the gratitude of Australians for these hardworking public servants, who so often live in the communities they support.

As the Prime Minister has said, 2020, for most Australians, will be the toughest year they may live through.

We all know the national cabinet in late March took extreme health measures to get on top of the coronavirus.

But we have to also acknowledge the impact this necessary treatment has had on our communities.

We have seen Australians lose their jobs, lose hours of work. We've seen businesses that have been forced to close.

These have been heartbreaking events in our nation's history and story.

In the face of an invidious challenge, the government has sought to chart a course through what has been an incredibly difficult time.

On 23 March this year, following the decisions made by national cabinet to close cafes, restaurants, gyms and so many parts of our economy, we saw thousands of Australians queueing at Centrelink offices across the country, seeking assistance and unsure of their future.

The queues that we saw outside Centrelink and the challenges and frustrations people have had in gaining access were a sheer function of the extraordinary and overwhelming demand for support across our country.

The scale of the need reflected the whole-of-society public health effort we had to take to keep us all safe from the virus.

Services Australia faced massive and unprecedented demands on our digital channels including myGov and massive demand on telephony channels as people sought assistance and information.

Services Australia faced what appeared to be an insurmountable task of providing social supports to over a million Australians made unemployed almost overnight.

Hundreds of thousands of these Australians had never interacted with the Australian social support system in their lives.

Many—over 100,000—were without Services Australia customer reference numbers and without any understanding of how to access supports further complicating what was already a mammoth task in terms of scale.

But I am proud to say Services Australia, in the face of the most significant demand for social supports since the Great Depression, faced that challenge and exceeded expectations enabled by the structural changes codified in this Bill

In the early morning as the queues started to form we took immediate action and that effort continues as we speak.

In the days leading up to 23 March, we took steps to boost the capacity of the myGov website to ensure it could support the huge volume of concurrent users.

Though it is now clear that the need was exceeded reflecting the historic tragedy of this moment in our national story.

In those moments we saw the great frustration, anxiety and worry faced by thousands of Australians.

No system is built to deal with the circumstances and events that we are now facing as a nation.

We have, as we said we would, worked night and day to build more capacity into all our systems.

Australians can be assured that no resource has been spared to ensure that we have systems in place to support them in their time of great need.

The arrangements codified in this bill provided sharper lines of accountability and decision-making. This was vital in driving a relentless focus on getting help where it was needed at speed.

With hard work and decisive action, within days we rapidly reduced the queues of new jobseekers outside our service centres; we registered hundreds of thousands of Australians online; we enhanced and improved our digital channels; and we made rapid changes to processes ensuring Australians in need would not miss out through the intention to claim registration process.

Within weeks we made impressive strides in process simplification and digital processing, keeping Australians safe at home and getting them help faster.

This included enabling people to establish their identity online, providing customer reference numbers via myGov and introducing a simplified online claim form, which people can complete in about 20 minutes, as opposed to the previous average of about 55 minutes.

These changes may sound small but these process innovations have made all the difference to getting help where it is needed at speed.

Australians can now obtain a CRN and apply for JobSeeker all online through myGov, something successive governments have been trying to deliver for years. Services Australia has delivered this in just four weeks.

In the face of this unprecedented demand we've surged thousands of extra staff redirecting people from within Services Australia, across the Public Service and from service delivery partners—totalling around 12,000 people including the extra 5,000 Services Australia staff the Prime Minister announced in March.

I had time to meet some of these frontline staff in recent weeks just down the road from here in Tuggeranong. Their commitment to the task is inspiring. It is clear this surge has been getting support to Australians in need.

I thank all the staff, especially those hardworking Services Australia staff who have made a vocation of government service delivery—many for decades. Without you we would have been lost as a nation.

And so through the hard work of thousands of Australians serving their community, within approximately 50 days, we've processed as many JobSeeker claims as we normally would in two years. It ahs been an extraordinary achievement by the Public Service officers within Services Australia.

More than 800,000 Australians who have lost their jobs are today receiving financial assistance from the Australian government thanks to the work of these dedicated public servants.

That's 800,000 Australians with greater certainty in an uncertain time and 800,000 Australians with a firmer footing. It is a truly wonderful thing.

As the payment infrastructure of government, Services Australia has also been charged with delivering the Australian government's economic support payments.

We've successfully delivered without issue the first of the government's additional supporting payments to Australians in need.

More than $5.1 billion in $750 economic support payments has hit the bank accounts of 6.8 million eligible Australians. A second round of economic support payments will roll out in July.

Services Australia has also implemented a number of changes to Medicare processes so there is no need for Australians to come into an office for any Medicare related business.

All Medicare related claims, changes or inquiries can now be done online or over the phone. This includes newborn enrolments, re-enrolments for people returning to Australia, and linking Medicare cards to myGov.

They are working around the clock to allow patients to access payments and services, including essential medicines, and health professionals to claim for services. This includes telehealth, video conferencing, telephony, and pathology testing for COVID-19.

We've implemented 279 new services to the Medicare Benefits Schedule, some within hours of announcement, to support recent policy changes, and as of last Sunday (10 May), almost half a billion dollars ($479.8 million) has been spent on these COVID-specific Medicare services alone, to support 5½ million (5.4 million) Australians.

These services give health professionals flexibility to provide medical care, and essential medicines minimising the risk of infection to health professionals and other patients in waiting rooms—helping to keep us all safe.

In addition, through changes to the existing aged-care payment systems, Services Australia is delivering additional payments worth hundreds of millions of dollars to support the aged-care sector.

These payments include a new COVID-19 subsidy, and temporary increases to a number of current viability supplements to support aged-care workers, providers and residents.

This additional funding will support around 1,800 providers of residential care and home care and their staff, and around 350,000 care recipients.

Through Medicare, the PBS and aged care, Services Australia works to support all Australians, when they need it, at some of the most critical moments of their lives.

Another area we've taken considerable strides in has been our digital channels.

I am proud to say that our digital channels today can support vastly more Australians than at any time in history.

In 2019, about 571,000 people accessed myGov every day, and we have acted quickly to ensure our systems can now support an average of 1.7 million logins on every business day in April. That's a million extra Australians every day logging in to myGov.

Our busiest day, 25 March, had almost three million people logging into their myGov account, compared to the previous busy day of 1.8 million logins in July last year during tax peak time.

For an authenticated online platform, myGov now has the largest capacity in Australia.

Mobilising technology to support Australians has taken on a new level of complexity and importance as we fight the coronavirus.

As Australians have turned to their government, we've had to step up to ensure services are delivered, whether it is financial payments to people who find themselves out of work, new communications tools to get information on coronavirus, or a technology solution to help health professionals to contain the virus.

Services Australia has been working closely throughout the crisis with the Digital Transformation Agency leveraging technology to help Australians—this close collaboration enabled by the Prime Minister vesting all service delivery within one portfolio.

The Department of Health turned to the DTA to build and manage the COVIDSafe health app.

Entrusting the DTA to build the app showed an enormous amount of respect and acknowledgement for the transformational digital capabilities inherent in the DTA—which has also rapidly transformed Australia.gov.au into a pandemic information website and developed the Australian government WhatsApp channel.

The COVIDSafe health app will help our frontline health workers stop the spread of the virus in our community. The app is the product of close collaboration across the Australian government including with the Australian Signals Directorate, the Australian Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health, and of course our close industry partners like the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre.

This app will save lives and livelihoods.

As the Prime Minister has said, the app is a critical element of the road back to normality.

Australians are already adopting the app at rates exceeding expectations.

It will make a difference and would not exist without the great work done by the DTA.

Like the DTA, Services Australia has also stepped up to deliver during the pandemic.

Many Australians have never needed financial assistance from the government before, let alone ever needed to contact Centrelink.

Faced with these challenges, Services Australia has done a fabulous job in delivering.

Conclusion

So with this bill we put in place the formal foundations for Services Australia. The bill puts in place the legislative underpinnings of an executive agency that has already demonstrated the capacity to deliver for Australians in great need, living out the Prime Minister's vision for service delivery in the Morrison government.

We could not have foreseen at the outset of that undertaking just how important that objective would be—it's a commitment that has assumed a new chapter of importance in our national story.

Indeed, that we have already achieved so much through Services Australia preceding the introduction of the bill is testament to the challenges we have faced over recent months, including our response to the bushfires, in which Services Australia played a key role.

I am sure that in this time of great need Services Australia has imprinted its role in public service.

The commitment to being there for Australians has never been more important than it is now.

So, we will continue the hard work of improving our government services and continue to deliver the Prime Minister's vison for Services Australia—the foundations of which this bill sets out.

We will continue to equip the hardworking staff of Services Australia with the tools they need to carry on with the important work of serving their communities that they live in and that they love.

As we reflect on this time it's right that we hold up those government services staff in the pantheon of professionals that have helped keep Australians going during the crisis, alongside our nurses, our doctors, our truckies, our police and our ambos.

These Australians have been there for their community, and Australians can be assured that we've taken every possible step to support them at this time of need.

So I say thank you to Services Australia staff for their passion and dedication in what you have achieved for Australians so far and for what we will do together into the future.

The commitment I have seen from you has remained unshakeable and I commend you all for all the incredible efforts you have put in so far.

While we have accomplished much, I fear the road will be long—but we will not stop in our collective efforts to meet expectations and to continue to build the trust of Australians.

While this bill will lay the legislative foundations for Services Australia it is abundantly clear the agency is already living out its purpose.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

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