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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This order for the production of documents relates to the review of the Serco pilot program by KPMG, which the government is using as the reason for further expanding the contracting of services for call centres for Centrelink. The government's response is that the government will not be complying with the order for the production of documents, claiming a public interest immunity in relation to the report on the grounds of cabinet confidentiality. They're saying that the KPMG report referred to in the Senate motion is a cabinet-in-confidence denoted document. I'm sure this has been said on numerous occasions: you take a trolley of something through the cabinet and say, 'It's been to cabinet.' This is an issue of huge public interest.

We all know that Centrelink has been missing millions and millions of phone calls. To be fair, previous governments, from both the major parties, required efficiency dividends, and staff were lost. But, most recently, a lot of staff were lost from Centrelink. Then we saw the consequence—millions and millions and millions of unanswered calls, not to mention people waiting for long periods of time in Centrelink offices. Then they go for a trial of 250 call centres. They get a report done. They now say it's cabinet in confidence so that we can't see what the findings of the report actually have been. They claim it's enough evidence to expand contract staff. The next lot is 1,000 contract staff for call centres, plus another 1,000 for the compliance section in Centrelink—surprise, surprise!

These sorts of documents should not be cabinet-in-confidence documents. They should be publicly available. It's public money that's being spent on a service that is absolutely critical to some of the most vulnerable members of our community, who are getting poor service because of lack of enough staff and lack of training for the staff. The staff are being passed from call to call because the calls haven't been able to be answered. The government claims that it's worked. Well, the feedback that we get from people is that they are not getting the support that they need to deal with the complicated issues that they face. This is a travesty, the fact that the government won't provide this document is outrageous, and we will continue to pursue it. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.