Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are a few things I want to say in response to not just the motion but the comments that were just made in the Federation Chamber. The first is around outsourcing and around the contract with Serco. If you deep dive into the experiences of both those who worked for Serco and the people who were directly employed within Centrelink, it is quite alarming. Quite often the people working for Serco received very little training before they were put onto the phones. We have a service centre in my electorate. Our local Centrelink and combined services office, where they do a lot of processing—what we used to call a smart centre—had to work closely with Serco. We also had some Serco workers. They received two days of training on our very complex social security law. How can you possibly support people when they ring Centrelink if you've only had two days of training?

The experience that got reported to us from people working directly for Centrelink was quite often that the Serco people, because they hadn't received the training, were giving out the wrong information, or they couldn't answer the call, so that person was being put back on hold. Technically, it might have appeared that your call was being answered within 15 minutes, but it wasn't being resolved. You were quite often put on hold or referred on, given the wrong information and having to call back. Outsourcing within Centrelink does not work. We need properly trained, directly employed Australians to answer and help support Australians.

We also have to change the culture within Centrelink, and I applaud the minister for going down that path. The idea that Australians accessing their social security and support services like Centrelink and Medicare are called 'customers'—they're not purchasing things. They're Australians. They could be clients. They are people seeking support and accessing what are their rights. This idea of customer culture that we've focused on is the wrong direction for our Centrelink. I want to acknowledge the efforts that the minister is making to change the culture: direct employment, less casualisation, and giving people the jobs they can rely upon into the future.

Let's also look at the workload that Centrelink have had since we came to office. This is something. It is a knock-on effect of having a progressive Labor government that is reforming our social security to support people. We have had some big changes happen since the last budget, and that has created more work for our Centrelink staff in particular and for our Services Australia staff. More families are now eligible for the family tax benefit, paid parental leave and the childcare subsidy. The agency processed almost 1.1 million claims from January to 16 November 2023. This is the workload that our agency has. The agency has received 7.9 per cent more families claiming in 2023 than it did for the same period last year. This is because our government has moved down a path of supporting more families, so the workload has increased.

The change in eligibility for the parenting payment came into effect on 20 September, resulting in 65,000-plus people transitioning from the JobSeeker payment and youth allowance payment onto the parenting payment. All of this extra, progressive reform, which this parliament supported and which we support, has created extra work. These are just some of the many areas.

What I also want to acknowledge, in the moments I have left, is the great work of our Services Australia staff, who, quite honestly, are hanging on in there. In the last decade, we have lost a lot of good people from Services Australia to the state system because their pay and conditions have not kept up. That's a real shame that we've lost talented, experienced people from Services Australia to our state agencies literally because the pay rates aren't the same. Our government is looking at that parity because we want to have the best people working for the public and supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

I want to give a shout-out to the people working in my electorate and, in particular, the specialists working in areas like aged care that have gone back to face-to-face appointments to help people navigate what is a very complex system. Our Services Australia staff are amazing. They forgo a lot to work to support our community and they deserve our thanks.

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