Senator BARTLETT (4:15 PM) —The Senate this afternoon is examining the issue of the adequacy of the levels of service provided by Centrelink and whether or not the matter is urgent. The government may not think it is urgent, and they can quote all the figures they like—numbers of calls, dollars, staff numbers, et cetera—but it is pretty clear that, in effect, it all boils down to the adequacy of the service.

All of us know that this has been an ongoing problem for a number of years—indeed, from before the creation of Centrelink. The telephone call service is completely inadequate. All of us would have had many calls from the public over many years, I am sure, expressing their irritation about the difficulty of getting through and the inadequacy of the advice. They have all been well documented, and the fact that it has not been addressed over such a long period of time highlights why this is an urgent issue.

Centrelink serves over six million Australians, including many of the most vulnerable people in our society. At the moment, in terms of the focus of a lot of Centrelink's activities, their prioritisation is economic efficiency over and above their levels of service, and Australians are clearly suffering as a consequence.

It is worth emphasising the point the minister raised in question time today, and it is a point I would agree with—that is, the problem particularly relating to the Centrelink call service goes back many years to when it was originally established under the old Department of Social Security by the previous Labor government. Complaints about the inadequacy of that service and the difficulty in getting through go back years, go back to when Labor was in office. It is an ongoing problem, and it shows the whole problem that has eventuated from shifting away from that direct personal service to using a new method of telephone communication, dressing it up as better customer contact, basically to try to save some money.

As I have mentioned a few times before in this place, I previously worked for the Department of Social Security as it then was. There is absolutely no doubt that it is enormously beneficial both for the staff and for the clientele, or customer as they are called these days, to have continuity, to have a direct personal contact—somebody who actually knows their personal situation and who does not just see them as being represented by a few sparse details on a computer screen or a few ticks in boxes on a form.

They are real people with individual circumstances and situations. If every time they try to contact Centrelink—assuming they can get through—they get a different person who does not know anything about their situation, they have to go over their circumstances again. Those sorts of problems inevitably lead to inadequate service, unnecessary frustration, unnecessary delay and the extra use of Australian people's time—client time, customer time and also staff time.

As has been well debated and well highlighted lately, the government has imposed an efficiency dividend upon Centrelink to force it to become so-called efficient. They are not talking about more effective services but about saving money. In fact, the special efficiency dividend of 2½ per cent, not applicable to other departments, has been added to the standard annual efficiency dividend of one per cent. The special efficiency dividend has resulted in $38.2 million being returned to the government in the last financial year. It will continue to be applied and, of course, will result in the loss of thousands of Centrelink jobs.

Clearly, all of us know that the service levels are inadequate at the moment, despite the best efforts of the existing staff. At the end of the day, it comes down to the number of people you have trying to assist the unemployed, pensioners, family payment recipients, et cetera. It might be that the department is so-called more efficient—it has lots of nice logos, good corporate marketing, et cetera—but that is of little comfort, I am sure, to unemployed people who are just trying to get a basic service and who are being told that not enough people are employed there to service those who are out of work, on the pension, or whatever the case may be. Over the coming year, Centrelink anticipates substantial reductions in its funding from its client department, so it is likely to have a funding drop of hundreds of millions of dollars over the next three years. Again, that is clearly going to affect the appropriate level of service.

It is worth having a look at the business plan which Centrelink announced last year and which identified three stages of development for Centrelink. One of them related to electronic service delivery and how that is to be achieved in the absence of permanent in-house technology staff now that that has been outsourced; and how that is going to be maintained in light of Centrelink's difficulties in keeping its computer systems from crashing and its phone lines open is not made clear in the business plan. At least humans do not crash, not unless they are under the kind of strain that many Centrelink staff are. They have to cope with these cuts on a daily basis and they face further heavy job losses.

Another stage of the Centrelink business plan related to establishing `a new identity with a strong emphasis on customer service'. Yet, in its first year of operation, Centrelink has experienced difficulties in delivering effective customer services to the extent that it has had the highest number of complaints to the Commonwealth Ombudsman out of all government agencies. Of course, that relates particularly to the issue that many people point to in relation to the call service, the teleservice. It is not just people complaining about not being able to get through; it is people complaining about the adequacy or the correctness of the advice they get when they finally do get through.

Again, this has to come back to the strain and the load that the staff are under—the inadequacy of resources provided to them, including particular training in relation to all the areas that they have to have expertise in, and the ongoing complexity of the Social Security Act and other acts that Centrelink has responsibility for, and changes are almost being made daily to all that legislation. How anybody—let alone people at the end of the telephone and the public—is supposed to keep up with it is beyond me. How are the public supposed to know what their rights and responsibilities are? It is hard to see, and one can hardly expect that anything is going to be done to improve that situation when resources are going to be further cut.

The other stage of the business plan related to consolidation. However, consolidation does not mean examining and fixing problems of underresourcing and, therefore, fixing service delivery deficiencies; rather, it is another word for further resource cuts. The stated aim of the organisation during this stage of its business plan is to become a more efficient and competitive organisation, to reduce overheads and costs, to stay in business; it is not to serve the needs of its clients or improve the level of service delivery. That is not the major focus.

You then reach the situation where the organisation—no doubt almost unavoidably because of the way it has been structured and set up and the goals and requirements it is required to meet—has to focus on overheads and costs, on staying in business and on being efficient and competitive, rather than the adequacy of the service it provides to millions of Australians, many of whom are in desperate circumstances and need urgent, immediate and correct information about where they can get assistance. To not be able to get through and get assistance or to get incorrect assistance is clearly not only bad news, frustrating and inappropriate for those people; it is socially and economically inefficient.

In the interest of saving a few bucks from an organisational perspective, that creates broader social problems for the rest of the community as well as for the people directly affected. Often times, you will find a greater amount has to be spent down the track by all sorts of other agencies to address those issues of poverty and disadvantage that could have been fixed if people got prompt, speedy, adequate and appropriate assistance when they needed it. That probably does not bother Centrelink in a sense, because they are focused on their own overheads and costs. Those other ongoing broader social and economic costs that develop as a result of not having a stitch in time when the need first arises are shared amongst all sorts of other departments, federal, state and local government agencies and non-government agencies. It is a cost shifting exercise that does not impact on Centrelink's own bottom line, so it is not a matter of concern to them.

The Democrats believe that this is clearly an urgent matter and is of great concern to many, many Australians. It is a problem that has been around for many years. Both this government and the previous Labor government have not done enough to address this basic need, the most basic aspect—the first level of contact for people who are often facing the most difficult aspect of their lives. (Time expired)