Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak once again on Centrelink and how the system is failing people in Australia who are most in need. I spoke on this matter last time the Senate met, and I will continue to speak whenever I can to try to change this system. As I said then, millions of people rely on Centrelink and the Department of Human Services. These people include, for example, those receiving the disability support pension, youth allowance, Newstart, the carers allowance, the age pension, paid parental leave and the family tax benefit. Millions of people rely on income support for their essentials so that they can pay their rent and their bills and so that they can eat. It is essential that a system that delivers those payments is as effective and as efficient as possible.

As I said last time, I have asked people to tell me of their personal experiences when they have been interacting with Centrelink and the Department of Human Services. I received hundreds and hundreds of examples of people's lived experiences across a range of issues, including wait times; problems with the phone system and the myGov website; the frustration of being bounced between offices, websites and phone lines; failures of assessment for DSP; and many other issues. The way people on income support are treated through the Centrelink system demonstrates the government's approach, which has been, 'When we have to try to save money, we will save it at the expense of the most vulnerable in our community,' and that is having real impacts.

I want to read into the record the experiences of people trying to get in contact with Centrelink and trying to access income support payments. Because I got so many responses, I am not able to cover all of them in one go. These are real experiences of people struggling in this very difficult system. Tara says:

I recently had to take an Aunt into Centrelink to get an income statement ... After spending 45 minutes getting through on the phone and another hour on hold, we hung up and drive to the office.

Sarah says:

I tried to get in touch with centrelink via the relay service as I am hearing impaired - I got through at one stage only for the person to say they could not help as it was a technical issue with my online account.

So I was transferred to another operator - was left hanging for over an hour and the relay operator was not patient to wait. So I hung up. Tried again the next week - same story - waiting too long.

Samantha says:

The minimum I have had to wait on the line is 55 minutes. I am advised something different each time I call. I have been charged over $100 of excess    fees for these phone calls by Telstra as I only have a mobile phone.

This phone waiting time is something I pursued in estimates the week before last. We found out several concerning facts. If you called Centrelink in the last half of 2015, you were more likely to get a blocked signal, or to hang up after waiting in the queue, than to speak to a person. The phone call-back service has been turned off, because it is not working. Centrelink's technology is old enough that it is making the queue longer. This is something that many people complained about. Centrelink has a limit to the music that is played in the queue. That means that the sound stops and the system sounds like it is hanging up on people, so consequently people hang up. Again, this means that people do not get to speak to a human.

The underfunding impacts on multiple areas, as the following clearly show. Cath says:

Last year I called them regarding my son, who they informed me did not exist. I was transferred from one department to another and each time was disconnected. At no stage did Centrelink call me back, each time I called back I was out on hold again and again.

In the end no one was able to resolve the technical problem for me and so I had to write a statutory declaration to them to declare my son indeed did exist.

Hannah says that she called multiple times, but could not get through:

I needed to call because online said I had an appointment with a service provider in two days time and I had never received a letter and had no idea who or where my appointment was.

Brett says:

I made two trips into Centrelink and made three phone calls that were over an hour each to get dad's pay for two weeks of paternity care.

Ree says:

We were applying for the FTB and the Centrelink website would not work for us so we went in to make the claim and we were told to try making the claim on the 'self service' computers ... Eventually it took us over 2 months to make the claim.

Jen says:

On Monday night I spent 61 minutes on the phone to Centrelink because I did not update my income estimate. My income has not changed. This is not the first time I have been asked to change it by $1 so that the system functions.

One of the frustrations is the complexity in the connection between Centrelink and the job services provider. As Callum says:

... for a job seeker, the interface between my private Job Services Provider and Centrelink is often terrible—appointments rescheduled, or scheduled without notice, Job services provider and Centrelink telling me different things. Ejected from systems without warning or notice, and only finding out when calling up.

Ruth writes of her daughter's experience:

She was told by Anglicare her service provider that she didn't need to go in for interviews, then told by Centrelink she missed an appointment with Anglicare. She went back to Anglicare and tried to resolve the issue, no luck they sent her to Centrelink who then sent her back to Anglicare. This took over a week and is still not resolved.

There is a particular story I would like to share of a single parent's experience with her job services provider. As a single parent, this lady needed to care for her children during the school holidays.

I was told by the service provider ... that I still had to attend my activity, and to put my kids in care or get a friend or relative to care for them.

When she told the provider that was not possible, she was told by the provider to take them to her activity. When she did not want to take her children into a professional kitchen, for obvious safety reasons, she was cut off. Then she spent ten hours on the phone to Centrelink, trying to have her payments restored. She was bounced between Centrelink and the service provider several times. She also had problems when her child was sick:

I got the flu, and one of my children was off sick from school. I ended up not going to my activity for two days. I called my service provider, told them I was unable to attend. I was told to get a medical certificate ... I got fined $119 for the two days I was sick and caring for my child.

One of the most concerning issues is the government's attempts to push people with a disability off the Disability Support Pension. We know that this is resulting in people suffering and that people are trying to exist on Newstart living with a disability, and that makes it harder to find work and to pay medical costs. Hayley writes:

Dealing with Centrelink has been my full time job since they cut off my Disability Support Pension in June last year ... I am disabled. I can't work. I can't afford medical bills on Newstart .... I've had to resort to emergency financial assistance from St Vincent de Paul and in between that I'm relying on meals delivered to me by my family.

Is this Australia, folks? This is the way we are treating people. I also have an account from Bob, who struggled for months to apply for DSP. Centrelink kept using an outdated assessment for an earlier sickness benefit application, rather than the information he supplied. He writes:

I heard that both my Doctor and my treating nurse had been rung—without my permission—and questioned. I heard yesterday they told my Doctor even if I was a double amputee I would be unlikely to qualify.

This is a failure of a system where the government is not adequately supporting people with income support and they are made to rely on a functioning Centrelink. They have directed people to go online without fixing the online system—without fixing the myGov site, without fixing their outdated phone system. Everybody knows, and we discussed it at length at estimates, that the computer system needs fixing, and yet they are channelling people into the dysfunctional, complex system which does not work and which does not support people. The system is inaccessible in many cases or they are directed to a phone system that simply cannot cope. In estimates they said, 'Oh, we're trying to fix it. It's going to take a while.' The fix for the computer system is years down the track and yet they are directing more and more people onto a phone system that does not work. The system is failing.