TRANSCRIPT - 2GB Weekends with Luke Grant

PAUL FLETCHER MP

Shadow Minister for Science and the Arts

Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy

Manager of Opposition Business in the House

TRANSCRIPT

2GB WEEKENDS WITH LUKE GRANT

24 AUGUST 2024

Luke Grant: Now have you found yourself left on hold for hours trying to call Services Australia? 

We've been hearing of complaints about this for some time and people are right to be annoyed. Some new figures which reveal close to 2 million Services Australia customers have been kept on hold for over an hour in the last year have come to light. 30% of people calling the Aged Care Line hung up early because they were forced to wait for so long and I think it's important to note that these are often people who can't use online services. 

You know, many of us would say, oh, who couldn't do that? Well, there's lots of people that can't do that, whether it be they're not, um, able to understand the technology or even afford the technology. So, they are the type of people that rely on a telephone and there'd be other people who might be vision impaired or whatever that get involved here. It now takes 400% longer for prescription shopping claims to be processed by Services Australia. 

It was 9 days under the former government, it's now 45 days on the most recent figures. I want to have a chat about this with Paul Fletcher, Shadow Minister for Government Services, who joins me on the line. 

Morning, Paul.

Paul Fletcher Morning, Luke. Good to be with you.

Luke Grant: You too. Nice to chat. I would be very surprised if you weren't angered by this and look, I'll just pick on one of them. The fact that you have to wait in the telephone for 60 minutes. 60 minutes. Given what we spend on the public service and administering government, that's just - that's laughable, isn't it?

Paul Fletcher: There's no doubt that service levels have dropped sharply under Bill Shorten as Minister for Government Services. As you noted in your introductory remarks on figures that we got through Senate Estimates, almost 2 million Australians had to wait on hold for more than 60 minutes, more than an hour, when they called Services Australia.

And if you look at what's happened to the different lines that you can call into, the Older Australians line, if you called that when we were in government, on average, you waited 21 and a half minutes. It's now on the most recent published figures, 46 and a half minutes. And Mister Shorten recently put out a press release saying, oh, great news we've improved performance, you now wait five minutes less on average. It still means you're waiting more than twice as long as when the Coalition was in government.

Luke Grant: I thought the public service had become somewhat bloated under this government. Have I missed something here?

Paul Fletcher: Well, it's interesting you say that, because Mister Shorten is putting on another 7,500 public servants, part of a total of 40,000 additional public servants committed to in the last Budget. There's now easily about 2,000 more people working at Services Australia than when we left government. More people but the service levels have actually gone down.

And I'll give you one interesting example of what they've done. There used to be a contract with a specialist outsourced call centre management company called Serco. So they're global specialists in this stuff. Mister Shorten cancelled that contract and instead employed more public servants.

Now Serco were specialists delivering better performance and lower wait times. So Mister Shorten's very interested in getting more public servants because they're all union members. He doesn't seem so worried about what is the best way to deliver the best services to Australians.

Luke Grant: And you know, in the lead up to an election you hear an Opposition, as they were at the time, say we've got to stop outsourcing these jobs or getting consultants or whatever it might be, and it creates that almost mirage that the worst way to do things is necessarily to outsource.

And if you tell me that we can, we can give this work to a business which has proven to be effective in handling call centres and the like. And for purely, you know, being able to beat your chest and say look at us, we deal with everything within government now then that's ridiculous isn't it? But people get caught up in this and I just wonder, Paul, to what extent people now accept that, you know, if you ring the government, you wait an hour? That’s just the way it is. No one wants to bully staff members, but that's the way it shouldn't be surely?

Paul Fletcher: We need to see service levels in government that are meeting expectations of citizens, and citizens rightly have expectations based upon the service levels that you get when you call a bank or an airline or insurance company. Now they're not perfect, but I'd suggest to you that they're often a lot better than what people are experiencing from Services Australia.

And if an outsourced provider can help, I've got no brief for Serco or any other company but what we want to see is the best possible service levels. We also want to see the good hard-working people in Services Australia supported with the tools they need.

One of the other things that Mister Shorten did was he fired almost 1000 specialist IT workers. And what that means is that the technology that those workers in Services Australia need to be able to serve Australians, is not progressing in the way that it did. 

Now you talked rightly about the fact that there will be people who will prefer to engage with Services Australia over the phone. But interestingly, if you look at the overall numbers in the last full year, 1.1 billion online interactions, digital interactions with Services Australia, that's people using their smartphone or their computer at home, 55 million on the phone and 10 million face-to-face. 

And if you can give people good service digitally, and it's clear that a lot of people do prefer to engage online, engage using their smartphone or their computer, then that's a way to serve everybody better and still have the resources there for people who, for the kinds of reasons you talked about, will always prefer to call up by phone.

And then the other thing that happens is, if the core job that Service Australia does, if they're getting worse at it - I'll give you an example. If you apply for the Age Pension, under us on average it took 35 days. On the most recent numbers Mister Shorten has given, it's taking 60 days now.

Of course, if you put your application in and you don't hear something, after a couple of weeks you're likely to call up and say what's going on. So if the basic performance is dropping, it also means more people calling in and again the service experience goes down.

Luke Grant: Yeah, maybe they should be renamed from Services Australia to Hang On Australia. I've just had a text from a listener, Margaret, who says, “Luke, I was quoted 13 weeks, wait for the Age Pension yesterday. I was born here, voted here, worked here, paid all my tax here”. 13 weeks? Now again, if that becomes the accepted norm, then that's, I don't know, that's ridiculous. Unless we're expecting people to be committing identity fraud or the like, how does that become the norm? Paul?

Paul Fletcher: It is very poor. And actually just doing the quick math, that's, I think I'm right in saying that's 81 days, no 91 days. 10 x 7 is 70, 3 x 7 is 21, so 91 days. And the figure I just quoted you, the average on the most recent quoted figures is 60 days.

So it sounds like Margaret is being told she's going to have to wait even longer than what was the average that Services Australia achieved last year. There does need to be a root and branch review of how Services Australia is serving Australians.

I've been calling for this for some time because the numbers that come out through Senate Estimates and the other information we've been able to get suggests that something is very wrong in Services Australia and the service levels have dropped very sharply over the last two and a bit years since we were in government and since Mister Shorten has had responsibility for this.

 And you know, I repeat that call today, we do need a root and branch review into what is going wrong and why people like Margaret are having to wait an unacceptably long time to have their application for an Age Pension be considered and dealt with.

Luke Grant: Yeah, amazing. Good on you for raising it. Good to talk to you, Paul.

Paul Fletcher: Thanks, Luke.