Victims of Centrelink failures petition the government to fix the service
The government must suspend Mutual Obligations, and debt recovery, to free up more resources to service people properly.
With the launch of a new petition, Centrelink recipients are demanding the Federal Government use emergency measures to fix Centrelink now.
With a backlog of 1.1 million claims, and up to 50% of calls going unanswered, the crisis at Centrelink requires immediate government intervention. All processes that are needlessly choking the system must be suspended, to free up resources, get through the backlog and service people properly.
While people can’t access services at all, the government is wasting vital resources administering mutual obligation punishments and chasing down Centrelink recipients over debts.
Hence, the petition calls for the immediate suspension of Mutual Obligations and all Centrelink debt recovery processes.
In response to Covid-19, the government made a bunch of temporary changes to speed up claims processing – waiving the assets test, the ordinary waiting period, and no longer requiring Employment Separation Certificates, proof of rental arrangements or the verification of a person’s relationship status. These eligibility hoops and tests are choking the system and must be suspended.
Minister Shorten said he hopes to see significant improvement in the agency over the next six months. People struggling to survive simply cannot wait this long for basic servicing. And, as we now know, if the government simply did it’s job, they wouldn’t have to.
The government knew that this crisis was coming. Department modelling, back in 2020 predicted it. This was revealed in Estimates this month, with Services Australia’s Deputy CEO saying that he knew the agency didn’t have the budget to ensure people were properly serviced.
Six months ago, the ANAO also released a damning assessment on the timeliness of payments.
The government knew people’s lives were about to be pummelled by Centrelink, and chose not to act.
Now, after the fact, the government decided to add some new staff to try to stem the bleeding (and evade some bad PR). We know, as well as Minister Shorten does, that this is nowhere near enough to dig the agency out of its massive hole. It is too little, too late.
While these new staff get onboarded, people’s lives continue to be jeopardised by Centrelink every single day.
The signatories of this petition are at breaking point. They are people who’ve been waiting months for their claims to be processed — forced to skip meals and vital medications, because the government is failing to deliver their entitlements.
They are people who are getting their urgent calls to Centrelink blocked, while they’re in an emergency, or crisis, that’s threatening to turn their lives upside down.
They are people — experiencing extreme disadvantage — who are being forced to spend hours, days, weeks, in a phone queue, because the government refuses to provide them a humane service.
They are people who won’t be quiet any longer.
Link to the petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/use-emergency-measures-to-fix-centrelink-now
Media contact: Jeremy Poxon
0404 089 575 / jeremy@auwu.org.au