David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Government Services. How will the Albanese Labor government's budget help to ensure the safety of people who work at Services Australia as well as the safety of Australians who rely on those services?

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

Members in the House may recall that it was on 23 May last year at Airport West that Joeanne Cassar, a team leader, filled in for the one security guard at Airport West at lunchtime. She was stabbed by someone coming into the Centrelink office that day. I visited the staff the next day, and I caught up with her and her family by that Friday. Unfortunately, violence against our public servants is not as uncommon as it should be. Last financial year there were 9,000 assaults and acts of aggression. In the first six months of this year there were 6,000, 852 of them serious. There are 10 million Australian visits to Centrelink offices and Medicare offices. There are 6,000 people who work there, and governments have an obligation to keep both the users of the system and the workers safe.

On the day after the attack on Joeanne Cassar, I asked Graham Ashton, a former top cop in Victoria, to cast a policeman's eye over how we can improve the safety in the system. He gave me recommendations within three months. At MYEFO last year, we announced a down payment of $46 million to keep people safe. I'm pleased to advise that in tonight's budget there will be $314 million extra over the next two years. This will lead to 606 extra security guards. There will be improved features of security at the offices that Australians visit. There will be improved liaison capacity with local police if an incident does occur. We'll be establishing, for the first time, a centralised security operations centre, with better CCTV and real-time monitoring of the 318 offices. We're also overhauling 35 of the busiest centres to improve the safety features of those which have the highest traffic.

I should say, in talking about keeping people who use our social security and Medicare systems safe, that it is only a very small cohort of people from whom the most significant acts of aggression are drawn. These are people who are frequently, as we've seen in other situations in Australia, grappling with mental health and other matters. But we need to keep people safe. People have a right to go to work and come home safely.

In addition, we're backing up tonight's announcement through the work of the Attorney-General and me to increase the penalties. At the moment, if you assault a judge you receive higher maximum penalties than if you assault a frontline public servant. I'm pleased to say, with the legislation that we have in the House, that if you attack a public servant, an ATO staff member or, indeed, an electorate staff member, there will not be a second-class set of penalties for these people. All people who work for the Commonwealth on the front line will be treated as equally important. This is part of our ongoing system to keep Australians safe.