Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, I want to call attention to the crisis unfolding in one of Australia's largest Commonwealth government departments, Centrelink. Centrelink is responsible for delivering some of the most critical services right across the social spectrum. It touches so many lives every week, and, without it, millions of Australians would find themselves destitute.

But over the last few years we have seen deliberate and systematic slashing and gutting of staff and resources to this critical organisation. Calls are going unanswered, applications aren't getting processed and people are waiting for payments to be processed for month after month after month. Then, when people try to sort things out, many of them get turned away from offices, only to be forced to wait indefinitely on hold in call queues and never getting answered. And let's not forget the robo-debt debacle, where 20,000 people were issued with false or incorrect notices.

This is not how we should treat any Australian, let alone vulnerable people facing personal and financial challenges. In electorate offices like mine across the country, we are seeing the fallout from this policy of negligence. Each and every day my staff take calls from desperate constituents trying to do their very best to navigate a system that seems rigged to demoralise and delay. Some say this is evidence of the government's neglect. I would suggest that we're looking at the mark of something far more malignant: a cynical and punitive campaign of a government hell-bent on punishing people who find themselves out of work, caring for somebody with a disability, collecting some family payments or simply ageing—part of the natural process—but wanting to seek an age pension. How else would you explain the Liberals, who have cut about 2,500 permanent jobs from Centrelink in the past two years alone, doubling down in the face of this chronic and worsening underperformance by slashing a further 1,200 Centrelink jobs in the most recent budget. Some members of the government seem to be under the utterly ridiculous delusion that unemployment is a lifestyle choice, that Australians are somehow rorting the system for the pleasure of eking out a poverty-stricken existence of some $40 a day. Indeed, the government seems so intent on creating and responding to its dole bludger myth narrative that it has dispensed with basic humanity.

The government will argue that this is simply a matter of responsible budget savings. I say to Mr Turnbull: how is it that your government can find $80 billion for big business, multinationals and the banks but refuses to allocate adequate resources to do your core responsibilities and instead leave these agencies to fall into decay? That's exactly what's happening. In 2016-17, there were 55 million unanswered calls to Centrelink. That is more than double the 22 million in the previous 12 months. People are waiting six months or longer to have their applications approved and for their living payments to start.

I had a shocking case in my electorate. A 72-year-old woman from Georgetown applied for the age pension back in April. Three months later she contacted my office at her absolute wit's end. She'd heard absolutely nothing about her application; she couldn't get any information. While I was able to escalate her case—and it was eventually approved this month, in August—it shouldn't have to come to this. People should not be reduced to having to contact their federal member of parliament to access basic citizenship entitlements. That's the problem.

A Shorten Labor government, I'm proud to say, will be doing our best to restore the damage being done. We will invest $196 million and add 1,200 new permanent and full-time DHS jobs around this country. Labor will also abolish the Liberals' arbitrary staff cap, strengthening capacity and capability within the Australian Public Service. Labor is working on how it will fix the damage done by this cruel government, which lacks imagination, to deliver basic citizenship entitlements. (Time expired)