E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECTS: Boost to staffing levels at Services Australia; Infrastructure
MEMBER FOR WILLS, PETER KHALIL: Okay. Good morning, everyone. My name is Peter Khalil. I'm the Federal Member of Parliament for the seat of Wills, which covers this wonderful Services Australia Centre here in Moreland Road in Brunswick, in my electorate. And it's very exciting to be here today with all this wonderful staff and team that are working so hard, day in, day out, to help Australians. And we've got a very exciting announcement. We've got the Minister for Government Services and the NDIS, Bill Shorten, visiting today to make that announcement. I just want to say, just to put this into context a little bit, the previous government, over ten years, ripped 3,800 frontline jobs out of Services Australia. And a lot of people would argue that was part neglect, part ineptitude, but it was also deliberate cruelty, as we've seen from the horrible, horrible impacts of Robodebt on so many thousands of Australians. So, it's really important to note that when people are struggling to find a job and they're trying to access Centrelink, when you've got young families, juggling so many different challenges and priorities. When you've got older Australians who need the care and support from these services. It's so important that the staff here and the team are able, with the resources to provide those services to those Australians who need it in their time of need and when they're vulnerable. And that's what this is about today, my office here in Coburg, we get hundreds of people coming seeking support. We have great liaison with the team here, but they need more support because it's about providing that to Australians who really, really need it when they're in trouble. Just one example. An elderly woman came to our office. She's tried to get support for financial hardship assistance. It took so long, she had to get her daughter to try and call on delays for hours and hours. This was a couple of years ago, but it's a common story. It's hundreds and thousands of people who have this common story. And she's still waiting. It was still waiting a year later to get that support because there's just not enough people. So, what's really exciting about today is the announcement that you're going to hear from Minister Shorten in a moment is going to change lives for the better. It's going to change thousands of lives for the better. And that's what we do as Labor governments. We help people, we give them that support and make their lives better. That's in our DNA. And I'm very excited to have Minister Shorten here visiting to make this very special announcement. So, I'm going to hand over to him. Thanks very much.
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Thanks, Peter. Good morning, everybody. It's great to be here at the Moreland Services Australia Smart Centre with hundreds of dedicated public servants. Today, on behalf of the Albanese Labor Government, I'm pleased to announce that we will be employing 3000 extra people to help with processing of people's payments and answering phone calls. There's 1.1 million transactions done by Services Australia online every year. Every year about $220 billion is paid in supports to everyday Aussies. But unfortunately, ever since 2015/2016, under the Coalition government we've seen a reduction in the number of people working at Centrelink and Services Australia that's been going down, but the demand has been going up. So, today we're pleased to say that for the first time we are arresting the decline and we're reinvesting in the safety net for everyday Aussies. What this means is that age pensioners will have to wait shorter periods of time to sort out their payments. It means that if you've got a Medicare payment which you really need that money, that'll be processed more quickly. It means that if you've got a child and childcare, we'll handle your payments more. It means that if you're unemployed and down on your luck you get some of the modest basics more quickly. Hopefully. It'll also mean that over time it'll reduce the pressure on our phone lines. This is a Labor government saying that we get what's important to people. If people need support from Services Australia that doesn't make them a second class Australian. That's their right. As an Aussie, we've got to make sure that government services are there when people need it. So, what we are doing is putting 3000 humans back into government services. This will help the existing staff who do a great job. Right now in Australia, we have the lowest number of people on the front line doing our safety net payment system compared to the population of Australia. We're now turning that around 3000 extra people. That'll include direct people to process payments, it'll include people to answer phones. We're on boarding at the moment 1000 people already. It'll take a little while to get to the 3000. We recognise that Australians have been frustrated by call wait times and payment processing times. This is not going to change overnight. But this is a significant 3000 person set of reinforcements to help Australians cope with cost of living by making sure that their payments money which is owed to them is done properly, accurately and quickly. Happy to take any questions.
JOURNALIST: Hi, Minister. Thank you. When do you expect that you'll have all 3000 of those staff on board?
SHORTEN: Well, we've started the interviewing. We've got about 800 to 1000 people who've passed the interview stage. They're being onboarded now. It takes them a little while to train them, but we're optimistic. By the very early part of next year we'll have these 3000 people there working, dealing with the phone calls, dealing with the payments. 20% of all phone calls are people trying to find out what's happened with their payments. So, if we can get more people processing payments, that'll mean less people have to ring up and chase their payments, which will mean that the phone lines will be less congested for all the other important questions. What this also means is that we want to make sure that payments are done accurately. What happened in 2015 is the Coalition Government made a decision to have a war on the poor. They decided to create a crude algorithm which would treat literally hundreds of thousands of Australians who deserved the safety net as criminals until proven innocent. We've had the Royal Commission. It's exposed the soullessness of the previous government's approach. They wanted to get away of saying that if you need the safety net, you're a second class Australian, not under Labor. So, this is a reaction to Robodebt. They were, on one hand, trying to punish people and at the other hand, reduce the number of staff to help people get through everyday living. So, now what we're doing is…. early part of next year. Early part of next year.
JOURNALIST: Okay, great. And you talked about previously the cuts have been 3,800. Do you plan on getting back to that level with the extra 800 staff on top of what you're talking about today?
SHORTEN: Well, I like that. Having announced 3000, you're asking for the next 800. Let's just get our first 3000 on board. I can also remind you that we put an extra 850 people on in the last budget just to deal with natural disasters. Once upon a time, Service Australia's main roles were family payments, welfare payments and Medicare. Now there's a new fourth activity, natural disaster payments. In the last financial year, we helped 1.3 million Aussies with about $1.4 billion in emergency payments. We've already seen the dreadful fires up in Queensland. I'm pleased to say that 232 people in Tara, in that part of Queensland, have all received payments from the government. So, we put 850 extra staff on just exclusively to deal with natural disasters. And let's see how we go with the next 3000 people. We will measure how we've gone in reducing core waiting times and payment waiting times towards the next budget and we'll see what else we need to do. I should say this commitment is $228 million, $228 million. But this is about making sure that where the government owes people money, we're getting it out the door quicker so that people have got that money in their bank accounts to cope with cost of living.
JOURNALIST: Thank you.
JOURNALIST: And just on waiting time, how much do you expect can you give us an idea of how much you expect them to reduce by for people who have struggled longer waiting time, hoping for that to reduce?
SHORTEN: That's a little hard to measure definitively by that. What I mean is that 20% roughly of the calls are to do with payments, waiting for payments. So, the first building block we want to put in place is reduce the number of outstanding payments, how much that flows through to waiting times. It's not a precise science, but we hope that we would reduce waiting times by more than ten minutes on average. But we'll have to see how the payment blitzing the payment backlog goes because if we can reduce the number of people having to chase up their payments, that's going to have a dramatic impact, I feel, in terms of everyone else being able to get through and ask their questions.
JOURNALIST: And just in terms of infrastructure projects, we've been hearing a little bit about this today and yesterday. Do you expect that some of those projects will be delayed beyond the forward estimates?
SHORTEN: Which projects are you referring to, Evelyn?
JOURNALIST: Sorry?
SHORTEN: Which projects are you referring?
JOURNALIST: Nothing. Not a specific project. But you'd be aware that the Treasurer and Infrastructure Minister have been flagging that some of major infrastructure projects around the country could be delayed. And I'm just wondering if you expect it to be delayed beyond the full estimates or cancelled altogether. It's actually a bit tricky with not a specific example.
SHORTEN: Yeah, I think you sort of answered your own question there. I wouldn't want to comment on specifics, and if you don't have any, it's hard to. Listen, the Treasurer and the Infrastructure Minister are reviewing the infrastructure projects. Clearly there's a skill shortage in Australia as well, but there's nothing more I can add to what they've said generally.
SHORTEN: Thanks everyone. Cheers. Bye