Celia Hammond (Curtin, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on this private member's motion. I too acknowledge and thank everyone who works with Services Australia for all they've done for us, during this COVID pandemic, through their work with Medicare, Centrelink and child support payments. Being a frontline service provider in any service organisation is a really difficult job. It's a really difficult task. Being a frontline service provider in pandemic times—when more people than normal have lost their jobs, people are ill, people are scared—is even more difficult and more daunting.

In normal times, the work done by Services Australia is huge. The figures from 2018 to 2019 show this. In 2018-19, Services Australia made payments totalling $184 billion. There were more than 3.5 million social security and welfare claims, more than 420 million Medicare services, more than 63,000 aged-care claims and around 980 million interactions with individual Australians. They are significant in and of themselves, but, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the work of the staff of Services Australia and the pressure on staff have increased dramatically. Services Australia has been at the forefront of the Australian government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing support to millions of Australians. And, in an environment that is rapidly evolving due to both the health advice we've been given and the policy settings that we've had, they have had to adapt and change in a remarkably quick time.

Services Australia centres have remained open throughout the entire pandemic. Since March, they have delivered more than $24 billion in additional payments and processed more than 1.8 million JobSeeker claims, providing income support to people in need. As at 13 November, $16 billion in coronavirus supplement has been paid to new and existing eligible income support recipients in addition to their usual payments. Around $9 billion has been paid to seven million lower income Australians, and over $16 million has been paid in pandemic leave disaster payments to almost 12,000 people across the various states. More than 300 items have been added to the Medicare Benefits Schedule in this time period, and over $2.54 billion has been paid for these items. At the peak of demand, there were almost 12,000 staff who were assisting the agency to manage its response to COVID. That sounds like a lot, but, when you put it in the context of what they did, it is actually extraordinary. This financial year, as at 6 November, the agency has processed close to 1.9 million social security claims—almost 70 per cent more claims processed when compared with the same period last financial year. As at 6 November 2020, the agency is processing the majority of social security and welfare claims in less than a week, so not only are they doing more but they are doing it quicker. The agency answered over 1.1 million more social security and welfare calls than in the previous financial year. They've upgraded the myGov capacity to support 300,000 concurrent users, up from approximately 90,000 concurrent users. They've gone from an average daily sign-in of 503,000 in 2018-19 to sign-ins of up to 741,000 in the full year 2019-20. The busiest day throughout this pandemic saw over four million sign-ins to myGov accounts compared to the previous record of 1.8 million logins during the July tax time peak period last year.

These are the statistics, but it's about the people behind the statistics who have gone to work every day. Sometimes they've faced abuse; sometimes they've faced a barrage of insults. They've had to deal with people who are crying in front of them, who are angry in front of them, or who don't actually know what they're doing. In my electorate of Curtin, four times as many people had to apply for JobSeeker than had ever done so before. These additional people had never been through the system before, so they had to navigate the system, and it was the service staff at Services Australia who helped them navigate. Yes, there have been some tensions at times, but I think everybody in Australia—even those who have experienced those tensions—could appreciate and understand why. To all the staff who have worked at Services Australia, I say a deep and sincere thankyou.

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