Services Australia call wait times increase sharply under Albanese government

Maximum call waiting times for child support and other welfare have almost tripled since the ­Albanese government came to power, despite pouring $228m of taxpayers’ money to hire 3000 more staff.

People line up at a Centrelink office in Surry Hills in Sydney’s inner east. Picture: John Feder

Maximum call waiting times for child support and other welfare have almost tripled since the ­Albanese government came to power, despite pouring $228m of taxpayers’ money to hire 3000 more staff to handle unemployment payments.

The maximum waiting time for an average day in May 2022 for child support was about 25 minutes; by September 2024 that had increased to almost 90 minutes.

This marks the highest that figure has been since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when wide-scale shutdowns and lay-offs suddenly spiked demand for welfare.

The maximum wait time for social security climbed from around an hour in May 2022 to almost three hours at the start of 2024. This meant the monthly median maximum waiting time in February 2024 exceeded that figure at the start of the Covid pandemic. This figure dropped down to just below two hours by September last year, still almost double that at the start of the Albanese government.

On some days in February 2024, some callers had to wait four or more hours before being connected with someone on the phone. The wait time for Medicare calls increased during the Albanese government but not as dramatically as did welfare and child support.

During May 2022, a caller could wait up to 45 minutes on the phone for health support. That figure peaked at the start of 2024 to about 90 minutes but came back down to about an hour by the end of the year.

A Services Australia spokeswoman said the boost in temporary staff in 2021 during the Covid pandemic masked the pressures the agency was under.

“The agency is committed to improving customer’s experiences … Since the (2023-24) injection of staff, both claim processing times and call wait times have improved,” she said. “With the increase of staffing, we have more officers available to process claims, leading to a fall in processing times as well as shorter average wait times on the phones.”

Services Australia released the dataset in response to a question on notice from the last round of Senate estimates hearings.

The government in early 2024 committed $228m to hire 3000 staff for Services Australia to cut down on the department’s claims backlog and call waiting times.

“When Labor formed government in May 2022, the Liberals had eroded government services across the nation,” the then-­government services minister Bill Shorten said at the time.

“As well as the Robodebt catastrophe, the Liberals slashed jobs at Services Australia, just as Australians were emerging from the colossal Covid-19 pandemic.”

Newly appointed opposition government services spokeswoman Claire Chandler accused the government of “undermining Medicare and Centrelink services … government service delivery has taken a nosedive under Labor, despite a substantial – and costly – increase in Services Australia’s headcount. Equipping public servants with the right tools for the job, not simply going on a hiring spree, will help boost productivity.”