Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it's fairly telling that the previous speaker acknowledged the need to restore dignity and competence to Services Australia, which is a pretty damning indictment, I think, on the record of the decade before the Albanese Labor government was elected. Let's get something straight: we know that the previous government treated those accessing Services Australia services with absolute contempt. This was, after all, the government that presided over the abhorrent robodebt fiasco, which ruined people's lives. This was a government that absolutely gutted the public sector. So please forgive me if I greet this motion before the House today with some cynicism. I do not believe for a second that there is a genuine shred of concern for people who have had to access Services Australia. This is just another tactic being used by those opposite to attack the record of the government, rather than work together with the government to deal with the cost-of-living pressures that people are experiencing and make sure that people are not left behind.

Of course, we know that people are doing it tough. We've consistently acknowledged that and we're working hard every single day to improve the lives of Australians in every community across the country, including my own in Chisholm. Indeed, in the 2024-25 budget, our government invested $1.8 billion into Services Australia over three financial years to maintain a customer service workforce to deliver timely services and payments to Australians experiencing vulnerability in the midst of cost-of-living pressures, to sustain emergency response capability and to support other aspects of the agency's operations. We know that this investment is improving claim processing times and helping to decrease call wait times for customers.

This is really important, and it's not about numbers on a page. I know everyone's been quite focused on a lot of data in this conversation, but I think it's really important that we don't divorce the data from people's lives and experiences and that we acknowledge the real stress and distress that people experience when they're hoping to get in contact with Services Australia to support them through what is often a very difficult time in their lives.

It's because we understand those very real pressures and stress that people face that we have committed to putting on an additional 4,030 staff in the next financial year and 3,530 staff in the subsequent financial year. This is because we want people to be able to get the help that they need when they need it. This will help the agency to meet government and community expectations for timely service delivery. This follows investments from November last year, when, in a record 10 weeks, 3,000 additional frontline staff were progressively onboarded into the agency and trained to accelerate claim processing times and improve access for customers.

We know that the agency has now reduced claim volumes down to usual levels. We've reduced a backlog of nearly a million Centrelink and Medicare claims to usual levels. This helped to bring down call wait times and congestion messages towards the end of last year. We absolutely know that we need to do all we can to reduce processing times and to treat people with the respect and compassion they deserve. We know that reducing outstanding claims is helping to bring down call wait times, as fewer people will need to contact the agency regarding the progress of their claim. We know that we've seen improvements in terms of wait times for Medicare and Centrelink customers.

Our significant investment in staffing came at a really critical time, when Services Australia had fewer public servants per capita than ever before. We know the previous government ripped out thousands and thousands of frontline staff from Services Australia and its predecessor department. That was an absolute shame. We know that this coincided with the horrific, cruel and illegal robodebt scheme. Our work in government has been about focusing on improving the capacity of Services Australia and making sure that offices and staff are located in major cities across the country where people need to access them.

I am really disappointed that the opposition haven't worked more closely with our government to improve this situation. I hope they do in the future.

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