Centrelink’s phone system is not working

“Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line until your call is no longer important to you.”

Anybody who has ever tried to use Centrelink’s automated phone system will tell you it doesn’t work. Only Centrelink seem to think it does, and they’re doing nothing to fix it

The current system automatically hangs up on a caller after the caller has been waiting for what Centrelink considers to be a lengthy period of time, rather than taking a number for a call back.

This means people are forced to call back and wait in a phone queue again, which often leads to the same result of the call being rudely terminated after another lengthy wait.

People have reported spending hours and being hung up on a dozen or more times before getting through to an operator. That’s if they get through at all.

If one manages to get through, they are then told somebody will call them back, but often nobody does, or there is a wait of many days before getting the call back.

Of course, you could attend their local office, but most times the staff there will tell you to go away and call the Centrelink number.

There is also the fact that not everybody can attend the office. The elderly, the disabled, parents with children, people who live long distances from the office – not everybody is in a position to attend the office, only to be turned away.

Or you could go to the online portal, except you need a MyGov account to do that, and it is notoriously difficult to navigate. And not everybody has access to a computer or are computer literate to the extent that Centrelink seem to assume they should be.

You also can’t ask questions of an online portal, and it often tells you to call the Centrelink number.

It seems the entire Centrelink system is designed to force people to use the Centrelink phone system, which simply doesn’t work.

Then it becomes worse. Having been unable to contact somebody through the phone system, Centrelink will often cut off benefits because no contact has been made.

They make contacting them near impossible, then punish the Centrelink recipient for a problem that Centrelink have created.

The conspiracy theorists amongst us could be forgiven for thinking that Centrelink do this on purpose, so people will just give up and the government will save money.

The reality is that it is about privatisation. Centrelink call centres have been outsourced to Serco, the British company that made $1.5 billion profit out of Australian government services last year.

Serco have cut staff numbers back to far below the bare minimum, so as to reduce costs and make more profit. This is done at the expense of the Centrelink recipients.

Added to this, the previous government cut back staffing levels and services available at Centrelink offices, so people are forced to use the Serco call centres, which benefits Serco, but not the Centrelink recipients.

Even those that have the capacity to turn up at an office face long wait queues, and are usually turned away, being told to ring the Centrelink number.

In the old days, when it was the Department of Social Security, it wasn’t so bad. You could either attend the local office and get your problem solved, or ring the local office directly.

This meant you got to know the people in the local office, and they got to know you. There was a personalisation of service, which is the basic business model of just about every private organisation.

These days, with the new phone system, one gets a different person every time, and has to go through the lengthy process of explaining the history of the problem over and over to different people every time. That’s if one can get through at all.

The solution would seem fairly obvious. Get rid of the phone system, put more staff back into the local offices, and allow people to ring the local offices directly.

And put it back into the hands of the public service. Serco are hopeless at it.

Craig Hill is a Brisbane-based Social Justice Campaigner, Writer, Teacher and Business Consultant. He has campaigned for social justice in Australia, promoted human rights in China and worked with the homeless in Honolulu. He holds a Graduate Certificate in Education and a degree in Management.