Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Job cuts. The opposition understands that maintaining the system which supports Australians' access to services and payments, including income management, is vital. That's why it's very concerning that, instead of strengthening Services Australia's workforce, the minister and Labor have launched a wave of job cuts, and that's often a criticism levelled on this side, but it's not one that's done in areas that create need and actually solve problems, and that's what we're concerned is happening here.

In December the Australian people were told by an agency spokesperson that up to 1,000 specialist IT jobs had been axed. But, under questioning in Senate estimates, Services Australia revealed that this figure was actually much higher. We now know that the figure is at 1,024 contractor jobs, culled by this minister of this government. Of those, only 130 have returned to the agency. This is a significant brain drain, and you can't turn a tap off and turn it on again and not realise that there's a consequence for that brain drain and loss of corporate knowledge. The Community and Public Sector Union has been calling for years to cut the use of contractors, and the Labor minister is ticking off on that wish list.

In the final few minutes I will talk about telephone support. Under Minister Shorten, Services Australia will struggle to manage the transition. Earlier this year it was revealed that phone wait times for Centrelink had blown out under this government. According to Services Australia, from 1 July 2022 to 31 January this year, it took an average of over 18 minutes for a person to be connected with a Centrelink operator. When people wait on the phone for a long period of time and then get to the end and it hangs up when they're told, 'I'll transition you now,' some people just give up. There's an assumption that people don't have other things to do or people to care for. Over 2.1 million Australians chose to terminate a call rather than wait. That's 2.1 million people who had a legitimate query and a problem to be solved that wasn't, and that cascades through their lives and through the lives of the people they are responsible for. This data, which was obtained from Senate estimates, also reveals that under Labor there has been a spike in wait times for Australians calling about the BasicsCard—again, flip flopping on programs. You can't just assume Australians, particularly vulnerable Australians, can just respond to what you're asking them to do. It's just not fair and it's not realistic.

From July last year to January this year it took over 13 minutes on average for someone to be connected with an operator. It's just not good enough to take that long. Imagine what the wait time will be when this transition gets underway. We submit that this will create absolute chaos. So the opposition has lodged a series of questions in writing to the minister about how he plans to deal with telephone support under enhanced income management and it's disappointing that to date there has been no response. The people who call this line are among the most vulnerable in our society but this out of touch government doesn't seem to care. They do not have a plan to manage what will no doubt be a significant volume of calls coming through.

I return to how I started, that the purpose of this chamber and this parliament is to be a voice for every single person in this country. Speaker after speaker who represent vulnerable communities in Australia stood up last year and begged the government not to take this course of action. They now stand up and say please, finally, listen to us now that you know the pain that it is causing.

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