Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to discuss the concerns of a number of people in my community about Centrelink's lengthy customer service process. Centrelink's frontline customer service staff have a pretty difficult job at the best of times, and I think that they do it well. I have worked alongside Centrelink staff out in the communities in McEwen that have been affected by fire or other natural disasters and, at those times, I have seen dedication and people wanting to do their best to help other people as much as possible.

I think that Centrelink's frontline staff are stuck between a rock and hard place. It is pretty clear that Centrelink's frontline customer service staff have been let down by their department heads and left holding the bag. Cuts to the number of frontline staff across Australia have not helped either. The Department of Human Services has failed to invest in resources and human capital to provide a service that is capable of meeting the expectations of clients. It is the nature of social services welfare that each person's individual circumstances are necessarily taken into account. We currently have a system that relies on individuals reporting changes to their circumstances. There needs to be an efficient and effective way for people to comply with this—and remember, the vast majority do comply.

One of the issues that people in McEwen continually raise with me is the long wait times, both in the centre and on telephone queues. Of course, there are options of submitting information online, which is great if you have access to broadband, but this is often fraught with IT glitches—and I am pretty sure many of us here remember the complaints we have received from people in our communities about supposed debts owing to the government that were not real. But forcing people online is not working either. Thirty-seven per cent of people using the Medicare mobile app have experienced problems using IT, and 40 per cent of calls to Centrelink arise because of difficulty using the apps or the website! IT glitches aside, we have people in our community who—for whatever reason—need to speak to a person about their circumstances. A 90-minute wait on telephone services experienced by Mrs Elliot from Kilmore is evidence that we need to provide a better way of providing customer service in this space. And Mrs Elliot is not alone; Mr Blakely, also of Kilmore, told me that with his hearing impediment and limited computer skills, it was almost impossible to make an appointment either by phone or on the website. Instead, he had to go to the Centrelink office in Seymour, where he waited over an hour to see someone because he did not have a previous appointment. For Mr Blakely, the trip to his nearest Centrelink office in Seymour is a round trip of 120 kays. These examples from my electorate probably echo the experiences of people in communities all around Australia. Instead of turning off the waiting-time message, perhaps managers at Centrelink and DHS could take a leaf out of Telstra's book—if the telephone queue time is extensive, Telstra provides customers with the option of a call-back service, and when they do call back, they ask if it is a convenient time to talk to customers and, if not, arrange a more suitable time. The situation we have is like something out of The Hollowmen: people can't use myGov, can't use Centrelink, can't use Medicare, and can't access DHS websites; IT glitches are telling people that they owe the government money when they do not; phone lines are jammed and offices are full because the online systems do not work— (Time expired)