Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to highlight a great concern to many in the electorate of Lalor. Normally, January is a quiet period for our electorate offices—for most, I would assume, around the country. In Lalor, many constituents go away on holiday and regular businesses take some well-deserved time off. It is generally a period when my office receives the least number of calls for assistance with government payments over the year. However, this January my office was inundated with desperate calls for help as the government's search for savings came to a head. While my staff are always happy to assist with these issues, they also experienced difficulty in seeking assistance from Centrelink. I am not suggesting for one minute that Centrelink staff are not performing or are in any way responsible. The responsibility lays flat at the feet of the minister; yet the Minister for Human Services is clearly in denial about a drop in service standards at Centrelink and the problems being caused for members of the broader Australian community who need to access Centrelink services.

We saw reports that Centrelink is only answering 64 per cent of calls from customers, leaving people unable to get someone at the other end of the phone to help them with their inquiry and help them through the processes that they need to go through. And 40 per cent of calls are because of difficulty using the Centrelink app and website. I do not want to diss everything the member for Chifley just said about Australians being early adapters to digital platforms. However, as a teacher I can tell you that low literacy levels and digital platforms are incendiary. They do not necessarily work. I can also tell you, by sharing a story from my electorate over the January period, that some of our older generation are not early adapters. They are certainly not digital natives and some of them are not willing or able; some of them cannot see very well. My own mother at 87 uses an iPad regularly, but I note that when I arrive she tells me that she needs to pay some bills and hands the iPad to me. So, although she is happy to look at Facebook and she is happy to see photos of her great-grandchildren, when it comes to paying bills and pressing the send button she gets very anxious about whether she has done it all properly. These are some of the things that we are finding at Centrelink when people are being pushed onto using the web and apps when they do not have the capacity to do so. Over January, some people in my electorate were told that they owed Centrelink money. When my office went through a lot of those, it was not actually the case. I think about the time spent and the anxiety that may have caused people.

I really need to share the following case and it is why I stood tonight in the House. In this case, a pensioner couple in their eighties were applying for the Carer Allowance so that he, who is legally blind, can help his wife, who is battling cancer. Both still live at home. They were asked by Centrelink in the application process to provide his and her full birth certificates. Obviously, they have been on the age pension for some time and, when they went on the age pension, they probably only required a birth extract. Why, when Centrelink already has proof of their identity in order to pay their age pension, were they put through these hoops? Why? The gentleman had to get his wheelchair-bound wife to apply for an original certificate while he had to travel to the city to the registry office in Melbourne to get his. In fact, their daughter travelled from Adelaide to assist them in this process. If we want to talk about productivity, there is a case in point: how much effort was taken when they were already known to Centrelink? Despite the overworked staff at Centrelink Werribee doing all they could, the couple had to go through those unnecessary steps to get what they were entitled to. If it were not for the persistence of their family, they would likely have just given up.

While I agree the government must ensure only those who are eligible receive assistance, the department's insistence on Centrelink management not using their common sense and discretion in these extraordinary cases beggars belief. Some in this chamber may applaud someone giving up on their application as a budget saving, but I see this as mistreatment of the most vulnerable in our community. I implore the minister to take some action and think about the human cost. (Time expired)