Hold The Phone: Centrelink Facing $80 Million In Cuts And 810 Job Losses (So Expect Longer Wait Times)

Centrelink’s woes continue following a report earlier in the week that 30,000 students had welfare requests “auto-rejected” as a result of an ever-growing backlog of claims.

As was revealed in Tuesday’s Budget announcement, Centrelink is now facing funding cuts of $80 million and will lose about 810 staff members over the next year.

So, if you’re planning on calling Centrelink in 2017, make sure you’ve got a good book nearby, because wait times are only going to get longer.

Welfare Rights Centre spokesman Gerard Thomas noted his concerns about the cuts to AAP, suggesting they will only add to the 22 million Centrelink calls that went unanswered over the past year.

"How is an efficiency dividend going to fix that?" he asked.

Right now, Centrelink is facing a backlog of approximately 27,500 claims, after peaking at 90,000 in March.

Sources in the federal government revealed that hundreds of thousands of claims were recently processed “in panicked haste”, to keep the backlog from growing any larger.

"Lightly trained casuals" were reportedly recruited to help, many of whom rejected claims without checking them against supporting documentation of contacting the applicant. Sources also allege that the quality checking process was “turned off” to speed up the whole process.

Despite this, young people seeking a response to their ‘Student Payment’ claims still had to wait up to four months to hear if they were eligible or not, causing many to miss out on attending uni or TAFE this school year.

For the 2016 school year, nearly 250,000 young people lodged ‘Student Payment’ claims. Approximately 40 per cent were rejected, which the Minister for Human Services Alan Tudge insists is consistent with previous years.

Centrelink had brought on a further 650 staff to cope with the backlog. It takes one whole day for a public servant to get through just three complex claims.

Seriously, get ready for some lengthy hold-times on the phone.

Photo: BBC.