Coronavirus: Bureaucrats man phones to reduce Centrelink wait

More than 300 public servants have volunteered to staff a newly converted Centrelink call centre in Canberra.

The MyGov website portal used to access Centrelink online has also been ‘supercharged’ to better cope with demand

The nation’s social services headquarters is being converted into a massive Centrelink call centre to deal with the hundreds of thousands of new applications for welfare benefits.

As Scott Morrison marshals the Australian Public Service to focus on delivering essential services during the coronavirus pandemic, more than 300 bureaucrats have volunteered to man the phone booths at the new Centrelink centre in the Enid Lyons Building in Tuggeranong.

Centrelink’s phone and online services have been overhauled in the past week to deal with unprecedented demand from more than a million workers already laid off during the lockdowns.

A Department of Social Services spokeswoman said other staff had been encouraged to work at home while the Canberra headquarters is repurposed into a call centre.

“The Enid Lyons Building in Canberra is being made available to provide critical space to expand the Services Australia call centre network. This will allow more staff to answer phones and process claims so Australians receive the support they need as quickly as possible,” she told The Australian.

“To enable this, the Department of Social Services is supporting staff to work from home where operational requirements permit, in line with the advice from the Australian Public Service Commission issued 29 March 2020.

“A number of staff from the Department of Social Services are assisting Services Australia answer calls.”

The Centrelink queue at Brookvale, northern Sydney. Picture: John Grainger

The Australian understands the Enid Lyons Building is the only federal institution being reconverted into a Centrelink call centre, but the government is opening to making more makeshift centres if this project works.

The MyGov website portal used to access Centrelink online has also been “supercharged” to better cope with demand after it crashed across several days last week due to demand from out-of-work Australians.

Social Services Minister Anne Ruston acknowledged the government had been bolstering the website’s capacity “for months” in anticipation of the coronavirus impact, but said “no one was ever going to be able to have the kind of capacity” to satisfy 200,000 users in an hour.

“Last week we saw hundreds of thousands of people register an intent to claim,” Senator Ruston told Sky News.

“Hopefully this week we’ll be able to get a better handle on how many of those were registering that intent and genuinely actually needed immediate assistance, and how many of those were registering their intent because they were fearful they might lose their job.

“We’ve supercharged the system … certainly these are unprecedented times.

“No one was ever going to be able to have the kind of capacity when we were hit with 200,000 people in an hour … its eye-watering the kind of capacity you would have to have for that.”