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

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges that during the earliest onset of the coronavirus pandemic, many Australian families found themselves unexpectedly in need of government support; and

(2) pays its deepest gratitude and thanks to all the women and men of Services Australia for their efforts in supporting their fellow Australians during this time of crisis.

Today, I'd like to thank the tens of thousands of workers at Services Australia. They've been staffing our national safety net during the COVID-19 pandemic. We regularly and rightly acknowledge our doctors and other frontline health workers, our aged-care workers and our disability care workers. But perhaps less present at the front of our mind are the myriad of workers who are helping Australians in their hour of financial need. So I want to say thank you to the people who work at Services Australia, formerly Centrelink. It is a workforce that deals with people often at their most stressed, emotional and strung out. Losing a job is a grieving period. It feels like a kick in the guts. It is stressful. It is a shock to people: families not knowing how to make the rent and wondering how they'll pay for the budget and what meals they will have to skip so their kids don't. Centrelink has been dealing recently with a mass influx of people who are not used to being on the social security queues. People have lost their jobs or lost hours of work. They are economic victims of the pandemic.

These Centrelink workers are a workforce who are often not in control of the resources that their government gives them. They are a workforce on which this current government has imposed an arbitrary staffing cap. This led prior to the pandemic to the usual problems of mass workloads, casualisation, outsourcing and the loss of corporate knowledge. But this year, on top of the last number of difficult years, has perhaps been the biggest for Services Australia in living memory, from dealing with the bushfire response across much of Australia in December and January to managing the surge, the tsunami, in new applicants for JobSeeker allowance that arose through March and April. These are rewarding frontline service jobs, but they are undoubtedly tough. The members of this staff, this workforce, deserve our gratitude for their efforts, particularly over the last few months. For more than four years, this battered workforce has repeatedly raised concerns about the robodebt debt-raising scandal, only to have them ignored by those more senior in government. This government was determined to harass, bully and unlawfully intimidate hundreds of thousands of Australians just so it could prop up its budget.

The government had the opportunity to transform the culture of Centrelink when we debated legislation to establish Services Australia in this chamber earlier this year. They had the opportunity to reconsider their ways at the start of the pandemic and to provide good-quality, secure jobs by supporting Labor's principled amendments to abolish the arbitrary staffing cap imposed by this government. Instead, we've seen this government, even at the height of the pandemic, sack over 400 workers from Serco and Datacom just a month ago. People who had worked up to two years acquiring knowledge were just shoved out the door. Imagine thanking the hardworking people who've been carrying the workload during the pandemic by sacking them. Imagine cutting their contracts with 10 days notice and letting them loose without any permanent leave or redundancy. The staffing cap was placed across the public sector in 2013 without weighing up the capabilities and requirements of every agency or department. The staffing cap is a cut in real staffing numbers. It is a privatisation policy by stealth. Agencies are forced to outsource, contract out, spend exorbitant amounts on consultants and engage labour hire contractors to make up for a lack of in-house resources.

When I say thank you to the Services Australia staff, I want to say that help is on its way if Labor wins the next election, and I sincerely hope that we will. Labor believes that human services delivery should be defined by fair and equal government services for all citizens. Labor in government will build a human services delivery system that is crisis capable, one equipped with resources to deal with national disasters of all descriptions on an ongoing basis. Labor believes that the design of government services should place people at the centre. We will embrace new technologies to provide convenient, more efficient and more effective delivery of services, but these will be supported by access to face-to-face services and in-person support where people need and want this. Under Labor, technology and service delivery will always use appropriate oversight, appropriate levels of checking and meaningful human engagement. We will not use technology to override the rights of individuals. We will not use technology to create a digital workhouse for the poor and the vulnerable. We'll provide proper dignity. We should have faith—Australians should have faith—that we have a crisis-capable system in our social security safety net. We believe in actual human service. Services Australia workers, we respect your contribution. Thank you very much.

See this speech in context