Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to follow the member for Macquarie, who would have, through the lived experience of a constituent, known very much the value particularly of Centrelink from the way that communities in the member for Macquarie's area were affected so badly by the bushfires earlier in the year. I know through the course of the pandemic in my own community how much of a part Centrelink, under the umbrella of Human Services now as part of this move in the legislation we are debating at the moment, has played in helping out constituents from Mount Druitt to Blacktown. I want to put on the record my enormous gratitude for their dedication and commitment.

These are very difficult times, and not everyone who approaches Centrelink for assistance necessarily will love 100 per cent the assistance they get, because the decisions that they are expecting won't necessarily get made in the way they would prefer or want—but that's life, unfortunately, in many instances. The hands of the people at Centrelink are very much tied by legislation, rules and regulations, and they do the best they can. They were really put under testing circumstances. As the member for Macquarie noted in her contribution, there were a lot of people who approached Centrelink for the very first time in their lives to get assistance at the start of the pandemic. They were required to get some sort of income support that they had never anticipated or thought in their wildest dreams they would be required to do, and at that point when they needed that help the system did not deliver. Again, it's completely understandable in many respects, with that huge overload, that that happened. I guess the Australian public would prefer that the minister just be upfront, direct and acknowledge that the system was overwhelmed. We got the excuse that it was hackers—the chief hack being the services minister himself, who had claimed there had been some sort of misdeed and that something cyber was happening that was affecting it. In the end, again as the member for Macquarie noted, he used the two-word apology of sorts of 'My bad,' which for a minister of the Crown was extraordinary. He should have just been upfront. He probably would have got a lot more credit for it.

We are now seeing in this legislation a migration—or a change or a rebranding as it were—of Human Services into Services Australia. At its very heart though, in terms of making this change, there is one critical element that holds up Services Australia, and that is the fact that it's got to live by an arbitrary staffing cap. With demand for the help of Services Australia going through the roof this year, notably through Centrelink, it would surprise a lot of people that the government say they will not put on enough people; they have capped the number of people available to do the work. It doesn't matter if the work goes through the roof, the government won't put people on. They say they'll put them on through other call centres and other providers. So they're not putting people on within the public sector; they're putting them on through contractors. Those contractors do have a role from time to time but it is better, I argue, to have those people in house—trained, dedicated and committed to long-term service to the people of Australia through Centrelink and other arms. When jobs are under so much pressure, we could bring in many people who have capabilities that are easily transferable to the public sector or—and this is radical—we could actually train up our young people! We could bring them in and lead by example and give them a long-term future.

In another debate here earlier, we talked about wage subsidies. Having looked at this space for some time, I can tell you there's a difference between a wage subsidy for someone you know, JobKeeper, and a wage subsidy for someone you don't, which is largely what is being pushed through this parliament. A lot of businesses want someone who they know has skill and capability already. The harsh reality is that they don't care about the wage subsidy. A lot of businesses say: 'I'm not interested. What I want more than anything else is a person who can come in on day one and do the job.' For young people, imagine having a structured career path through the Australian Public Service where you are trained up, you build a range of skills, and at some point you may go out into the broader job market and apply those skills there. You could do that within the Public Service. That's actually not a bad thing to do. It is an anathema.

Ms Bird interjecting—

It used to happen, as the member for Cunningham rightly points out, but it's an anathema to those opposite. They do not want more public servants. But the public wants service and understandably demands it at this point in time. It would give someone employment. In particular, it would give young people employment. Outside of Defence, Services Australia has one of the biggest IT requirements in the Australian Public Service. Imagine providing digital apprenticeships where you train up young people with the skills that will hold them in good stead in the longer term. Services Australia, through its IT budget, with its procurement and from what it does internally, has the potential for a huge beneficial impact not only in terms of internal employment, but outside employment as well.

My comments tonight will be limited because of time, but I will return to this issue tomorrow. What is happening under one agency in particular, the Digital Transformation Agency, which comes under the minister's responsibilities, is an absolute tragedy. It's promise was to have a positive and meaningful impact on the way services are delivered to the general public. The transformation of the way those services are done—using a digital platform, in many instances, to do it—is a tragedy. This is something that definitely has to be followed up. But, having said that, within Services Australia in particular, at a time when joblessness is going through the roof and when we could give people the ability to get a traineeship, it is an absolute tragedy that the government have not thought laterally and provided digital traineeships to a greater extent, because they do it already, through the DTA or Services Australia, and train young people up, giving them hope for the longer term, for the future.

Debate interrupted.

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