‘What I am basically saying is that welfare must become a good deal for investors, for private investors. We have to make it a good deal for the returns to be there, to attract the level of capital that will be necessary in addition to the significant injection of capital and resources that is already provided by the Commonwealth.’
The privatisation of Centrelink, long predicted by analysts of the social welfare policies of the Abbott/Turnbull Government and promoted by current Treasurer and former Social Services Minister Scott Morrison, is accelerating, and will only worsen Centrelink’s dismal performance and reputation.
In March 2015 Kelly Tranter wrote about Government plans to privatise Centrelink.

A number of Centrelink call centres have been outsourced to corporate operators since 2014 when Telstra took over a number of call centres and there are plans to outsource all call centre operations to Telstra.
Privatisation by stealth also occurs through benign neglect. This occurs when Government runs down and undermines the capacity of Centrelink to perform its responsibilities, through staff cuts and staff freezes; outsourcing and fragmentation of services to private providers who deliver poorer quality services; constant changes to policy and eligibility requirements; underfunding, funding cuts and restrictions; constant restructuring; failure to address problems and failure to invest in systems, process and technology to meet demand.

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An Auditor-General’ report in May 2015 found almost a quarter of the 57 million phone calls made to Centrelink last year went unanswered, and Australians spent 143 years waiting in vain to speak to the agency in 2013-14, before simply hanging up. About 13.7 million calls did not make it to even the point of being put on hold, after they were blocked or received a “busy signal”.
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The Australian National Audit Office’s Management of Smart Centre’s Centrelink Telephone Services Report showed that approximately 40 per cent of all incoming calls result from failed online or self-services and the growth of digital transactions has not reduced demand for call centre services as was anticipated.
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The department was savaged in a midyear National Audit Office report for its customer service performance and ended the year plagued by serious website malfunctions. In November and December, clients suffered through weeks of disruption to the Centrelink websites used by millions of Australians to manage their payments and report their work activities. The agency was forced to apologise after weeks of “intermittent issues” left many clients unable to log onto their account.
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A New Year’s Day glitch caused 70,000 people to be told they owed up to $800 to the Government.
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DHS staff wages and conditions have been under attack. The 2014-15 Australian Public Service ‘State of the Service Report’, shows that only 59% of APS staff believe they are paid fairly, down from 67 per cent last year.
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The Minister has failed to respond to Audit Office and Ombudsman reports which note service delivery failures in customer identity protection, call wait times, online and face to face services.
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The Commonwealth Ombudsman’s follow-up review of service delivery complaints at Centrelink has revealed that problems have persisted for more than 18 months after his initial report was published in April 2014.
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Clients are being “shooed away” from Centrelink offices and told to take their problems online, resulting in an avalanche of complaints.
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Frontline staff are facing a 20 per cent increase in instances of customer aggression, blamed by the opposition and unions partly on frustration at the agency’s customer service performance.
The legislation, to be phased in on July 2016 will initially effect around 2000 unemployed workers.
The legislation will give job agencies unprecedented and sweeping new powers over the lives of unemployed workers.
In December 2015, the Coalition Government introduced legislation to reform the rural Community Development Program (CDP) “so that local service providers will make income support payments instead of Centrelink”. The legislation will be phased in on July 2016 and will at first effect around 2000 unemployed workers.
This is the beginning of what we have all been dreading: placing the functions of Centrelink in private hands, or in other words the privatisation of Centrelink.
Putting the functions of Centrelink into private hands is a recipe for disaster. By putting a profit motive into the Social Security System, every Australian citizen’s right to Social Security is under threat.
In an ominous press release, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion stated “under these reforms, there will be more local decision-making by providers who know the jobseekers and have closer connections to what is going on in communities. Payments will be made weekly so remote jobseekers have immediate access to their money and feel the financial impact of not turning up to activities straight away – not weeks down the track.”
Currently, legislation states that the employment services industry is not able to make compliance decisions as these decisions must be made by Centrelink. It appears that this legislation aims to change that, giving job agencies unprecedented and sweeping new powers over the lives of unemployed workers.
Starting the privatisation of Centrelink in the rural Community Development Program is yet another example of the Government using Indigenous Australians as guinea pigs to test its new cruel and unusual policies towards the unemployed.
The Government hopes that if they privatise Centrelink out in the remote areas of the Northern Territory no one will notice. We have noticed and we think it’s disgraceful.
An attack on one unemployed worker is an attack on all workers. We must stand in solidarity with our Indigenous brothers and sisters before it’s too late.
Sign this petition and let the Government know we firmly oppose its attempts to privatise Centrelink.
I am sick to death of the Australian government telstra t he banks and other government bodies sending all our private details offshore what is wrong with Australia handling our own affairs we have people here crying out for work that is being given to other countries and they are wondering about our economy if they would stop paying people overseas to do the work that used to be done by our Australian workers that money would be spent in Australian I think this would go a long way towards fixing our economy instead of cutting into peoples benefits and earnings rant over
If the Government privatizes all the public service departments will we really need
Ministers? What would they do?
Privatisation is not the answer. And neither is the LNP.
Very simply, I am against the dismantling of the safety net by conservatives, for the purposes of shifting taxes into the pockets of their wealthy patrons.
It is not the purpose of the taxpaying public, to fund the activities of the corporations.
“An Auditor-General’ report in May 2015 found almost a quarter of the 57 million phone calls made to Centrelink last year went unanswered, and Australians spent 143 years waiting in vain to speak to the agency in 2013-14, before simply hanging up.”
How many YEARS were they waiting in vain..:) it certainly feels like it every time i ring.
The privatisation of social services has time and time again proven to be bad for both the taxpayer and those who access the services. Whether it is in the social welfare sector, education or health the results are generally the same. Look at the debacle over the private TAFE providers.
The fact that successive governments ignore this experience, turning a deaf ear even to the lastest Centrelink disaster in spite of all the evidence is, in my opinion, due to the conflation of the Neo Liberal Ideology with a desire by senior civil servants to remove themselves as far as possible from the responsibility of actual delivery of services. When things go wrong they can blame the private provider and change them regardless of the effects it has on those people who have to deal with these services.
It is no accident that in the pay of public servants increases substantially the further they are distanced from actual service provision.