Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to update the House on the Security Risk Management Review into staff safety at Services Australia. This review was in response to a serious physical attack on a staff member at Services Australia's Airport West service centre in North Melbourne. I announced the review on 24 May this year, the day immediately after Joeanne Cassar was brutally attacked at the job she had loved going to for 37 years.

Joeanne is a senior and much-loved team leader at Airport West. She was stabbed in the back by a customer as she was filling in for a security guard at the lunchbreak so he could have his lunch. Joanne will live with a permanent injury forever. She has made a recovery, but nonetheless has sustained permanent impairment. The toll this terrible event has taken on Joeanne, her family, her colleagues and the customers who witnessed the attack is immeasurable.

When I visited the staff at Airport West the day after the assault, I listened to them and I promised I would do whatever I could to help them—and, indeed, all of the people who work in Services Australia and, indeed, all of the people who use their services—to be safe. That day I immediately asked the former chief commissioner of Victoria Police, Mr Graham Ashton, to use an experienced police officer's eye to review the adequacy of the safety of Service Australia's staff and users.

To put some perspective into Mr Ashton's task, Services Australia has 318 service centres across Australia, with approximately 6,000 staff providing face-to-face support to Australians. During the financial year 2022-2023, Services Australia had 10 million face-to-face interactions at their service centres. In the same period, there were almost 9,000 face-to-face customer aggression incidents.

Mr Ashton visited service centres across New South Wales and Victoria, including Airport West, and engaged directly with hundreds of staff in developing his findings. I asked Mr Ashton to make sure that the voices of the frontline Services Australia workers were heard and that the level of staff engagement undertaken was an integral feature of this review.

Services Australia staff do all they can to support Australians in their time of need and they rightly deserve respect in return. Not only in the day-to-day business of overseeing payments through Centrelink but through emergencies like fire, floods or the pandemic, Services Australia staff have been there. What we know is that a very small cohort of people who act aggressively or violently are in no way representative of the millions of Australians who come to Services Australia every year.

Services Australia has a range of ways it provides additional support to people in need. The agency has more than 650 highly skilled social workers who provide support and connect people to additional services in their local area. These social workers also play an important role in reducing customer aggression by providing tailored support to the most vulnerable customers.

The agency also has a number of community partnership specialist officers who connect people with payments and services in a place they already go for support from frontline homelessness organisations. A CPSO co-located service is preventing the need for vulnerable customers to attend service centres, and I think it also has a benefit in reducing incidences of customer aggression. Mr Ashton has noted that our social workers and CPSOs play a valued and important role in providing a wraparound service for vulnerable customers. I thank Graham Ashton for carrying out his task with professionalism and compassion and at a pace that reflected the urgency of this matter. I thank every Services Australia staff member who contributed their insights into the review.

Last Friday, on 13 October, I returned to Services Australia's Airport West service office to announce the Albanese government's response to the Ashton review. I'm pleased to advise that the Albanese government will act on all 44 of Mr Ashton's recommendations. As a result we have committed more than $40 million to strengthening security at the service centres in the agency. Importantly, the government will also prioritise stronger legislation to combat violence and aggression against Public Sector workers who deliver services to Australians. The changes we propose and will introduce into parliament in the autumn session will extend to public servants who deliver services in Commonwealth agencies, not just limited to Services Australia but agencies such as the National Disability Insurance Agency, the ATO, agriculture inspectors and departments like Home Affairs.

What happened at Airport West and has been an issue at other service centres around the country in that on this day there was only one security guard on duty. At some point that one guard needed to take a break. Joeanne was attacked under these circumstances when she was triaging customers as they entered the service centre. The reforms will include an extra 278 trained security staff at key offices, taking the total number to 513. Further, we will examine laws that deter and punish violence and aggression against all Commonwealth Public Sector workers who deliver services to Australians, and this will include a Commonwealth workplace protection order scheme.

There is currently a loophole whereby in most jurisdictions an individual who works at Services Australia and who is the victim of aggression or violence has to take out an apprehended violence order against the perpetrator in their own name, so the individual worker has to pursue the application. This is obviously a retraumatising experience for the victim, not to mention the unfair administrative burden it places on them. This work would scope reforms that would allow the agency to take out the intervention order in relation to the workplace. It means that individual workers should not need to seek an order and the whole workplace is protected from further violence. It means that if someone has felt threatened personally they do not personally need to take the intervention order against the perpetrator, who might be hanging around in the car park or displaying provocative behaviour. This would mean the agency, the employer, will have the power to represent the worker who is essentially only under threat because of the job they do. Frontline staff will receive additional training and there will be upgrades to customer systems, including kiosks and appointments. We'll enhance the design of service centres to improve staff safety whilst maintaining the welcoming customer environment.

I acknowledge the agency has been working hard over the past year to modernise face-to-face services with these contemporary designs. I acknowledge that more than 100 of the service centres have already been transformed, and that program will also continue, enhanced by Mr Ashton's recommendations. The people who work at Services Australia, in my experience, are fundamentally committed to working with everyday Australians to help them access government services. The people who work at the coalface are there when Australians need them. These are the people we need to look after so they can look after us. Just like nurses and firefighters and teachers and retail workers, no-one should go to work and have to experience aggression and violence. The Albanese government is putting our words of support for the Commonwealth Public Service into action, and I appreciate the support of the opposition.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the delivery of the Services Australia Security Risk Management Review and the minister's statement today. I thank the minister for his engagement with me on this issue. Regrettably, the circumstances around this review are distressing. The review arises from a serious incident in May this year in which a Services Australia staff member, Ms Joeanne Cassar, was the victim of a vicious physical attack at Airport West service centre in Melbourne. I note that the individual circumstances of the incident are the subject of a Comcare investigation and criminal proceedings, as well as internal consideration by Services Australia. On behalf of the opposition, I again offer my thoughts and best wishes to Ms Cassar and her family. By all reports, she is a well-respected and dedicated public servant, and I'm sure all of us in this House are grateful for her work, serving Australians who are customers of Services Australia. I also acknowledge that many other staff at the Airport West service centre witnessed, or were otherwise disturbed by, this confronting incident.

In my brief remarks I want to express my strong support for the principle that workplace safety must be upheld, and I also want to urge the minister that in addition to his commendable and absolutely correct concern for the welfare of staff, it's important that he shows concern for customers and demonstrates a customer service mindset. Let me be clear: every Australian has the right to be safe in their workplace. This is fundamental and paramount. We know that those who are in customer-facing roles, whether in government or the private sector, can face risks that those who are not in such roles do not face. Of course much of the work undertaken by the Australian Public Service is customer facing, and Services Australia is right at the forefront of that.

Thousands of staff at Services Australia have continuing and regular engagement with the Australian public, particularly staff engaged at service centres, access points, agent sites and mobile services centres. We know of course that the cost-of-living crisis means that more Australians are having cause to interact with Services Australia, many of whom are in difficult and constrained circumstances. Sadly, a small percentage of them—and it must be acknowledged that it is a very small percentage—find themselves engaging in antisocial or violent behaviour. There is never an excuse, of course, for such behaviour, but it does underline the importance of a comprehensive response from this government to the cost-of-living crisis, which is challenging many Australians.

It is appropriate that Services Australia and the government continuously monitor the security arrangements in place for employees of Services Australia. I note that there are some legislative changes recommended. The opposition will consider those in the normal way. I want to highlight a particular passage in the review which reads as follows:

The current design of contemporary service centres, which are being gradually rolled out nationwide are well received from an aesthetic aspect as they create a positive and welcoming atmosphere for customers. Staff concerns though are that the design is too customer focused and presents considerable safety risks to staff.

This nationwide upgrade of service centres began under the coalition, and we transformed more than 100 service centres. The current government, according to information received through Senate estimates, is presiding over a backlog of 218 service centres which are still yet to be upgraded.

The approach to upgrading service centres to better meet the expectation of customers draws on the considerable success achieved under the former coalition government in New South Wales and the work of Minister for Customer Service Victor Dominello. In Service NSW, there was a focus on encouraging greater self-service, particularly via digital channels, eliminating bottlenecks, and creating and fostering a strong and respectful customer service culture. That 'customer first, citizen first' focus of the former New South Wales Minister Dominello was an inspiration for the decision of the former coalition government to create Services Australia in 2019. So it is somewhat puzzling to see, in the passage I read above, a complaint about the design of a service centre being too customer focused.

Services Australia is a customer-facing organisation. It needs to be customer focused, and there needs to be strong leadership continue to foster and develop a customer services culture at Services Australia. Of course staff safety must be maintained and protected. But one of the principles that has been demonstrated with Service NSW is that if you have service centres that respond better to the needs of customers, providing them with a smoother and more efficient process, where they are waiting for a shorter period of time and have a higher likelihood of getting a satisfactory outcome from their interaction, that has many benefits, one of which is that it contributes to them being a safer environment.

Unfortunately, the current minister's track record demonstrates that he is, sadly, presiding over the opposite of a customer service culture. We saw recently, on 9 October, a union-led strike at Services Australia, which resulted in the closure of three service centres and caused an uptick in waiting times across the Services Australia network. The minister wasn't bothered by this. He didn't front up to explain how he was dealing with the union led-strike, nor did he apologise to affected Australians.

We know that under this minister's watch a major contract with call centre operator Serco has been axed. Now, I've got no particular brief for Serco or any other operator, but what we do know is that the data from Services Australia obtained by the opposition shows that call centre waiting times have rocketed under this minister. The waiting time for Australians calling the employment services line is now on average almost 30 minutes. That is well up from where it stood under the coalition in 2021-22.

The opposition has consistently asked the minister and his agency to release data—data, I might say, that the former coalition government freely provided to the public and the then opposition—on how long Australians are having to wait in line at service centres. Each and every time, these uncontroversial requests have been blocked. Don't just take my word for it; take the word of Services Australia's long-time agency spokesman Mr Hank Jongen, who admitted live on radio in August that widespread delays to the processing of paid parental leave was a result of understaffing. He said, 'In reality, we are understaffed in our service delivery postcodes', adding that 'we are currently actively trying to recruit staff to help us address call centre and processing delays.'

Sadly, I don't have the time to go at full length into just how much this minister has dropped the ball in relation to digital transformation. But this review indeed hints at the digital paralysis that is gripping Services Australia. The review mentions a customer aggression reporting dashboard that is yet to be finalised. One of the reasons it probably hasn't been finalised is that this minister has fired over 1,000 specialist ICT personnel. Of course safety is of first importance but so too is customer service, where this minister has dropped the ball.