Claims for the disability support pension took more than 80 days on average in the final months of last year and some local government areas are experiencing average wait times of more than 200 days, data has revealed.
According to the data provided by the Department of Social Services in Senate estimates last month, disability support pension claims took an average of 82.2 days to be processed between September and December 2023.
In 2020-21, the average wait was 33 days, increasing to 40 in 2021-22 and 46 in 2022-23.
The department did not answer questions about the longest amount of time people are waiting for their DSP claim to be processed. A breakdown of times by LGA between July and December last year showed that in some cases claims are taking almost 300 days to process.
The data shows some areas had an average wait time of more than 200 days. Those areas included Yalgoo in Western Australia, where the average processing time was 289 days; Wyalkatchem, WA, where it was 205; and Kent, WA, where it was 226.
The department has a “timeliness standard” – a target set by Services Australia and its partner agencies for 80% of DSP claims to be completed within 84 calendar days.
Last month, the social services minister, Bill Shorten, acknowledged the delays were “a real problem” caused by understaffing and said the government’s “priority is to blitz the payment backlog”.
Melbourne woman Megan, 58, who did not want her real name used, waited 114 days for her claim to be processed.
She has generalised anxiety disorder and persistent depressive disorder. She lost her husband to suicide in 2012. After that, she “struggled on” until her mental health deteriorated and she could no longer continue her career in tertiary education.
“I literally came home and closed the door. That was it,” she said.
Megan lived off her savings until the pandemic, when she went on to the jobseeker payment. She is now receiving care but cannot work and struggles to leave the house.
For more than a year she put in a medical certificate every six weeks so she would not have to perform mutual obligations, which require payment recipients to study, attend job interviews, improve literacy or work for the dole.
In October Centrelink said it would no longer accept Megan’s medical certificates. She broke down on the phone and the officer told her they would give her another two weeks’ exemption.
Desperate, she called the office of her local MP, independent Zoe Daniel. Three days later Centrelink told her she could start her claim without having all the proper DSP paperwork.
“Suddenly, this door opens that wasn’t there before that pauses your obligations until the claim has been resolved. No one had ever said that until I went through my MP,” Megan said.
She applied on 6 November and had her assessment on 30 January.
Megan tried to find out from Centrelink what was happening to her claim, but could not get an answer. She then contacted Daniel’s office to follow up.
“It was incredibly stressful,” she said. “It’s felt like everything was just set up to make things harder and to make you go away and not bother and not persist.”
She was told her claim was successful on 28 February.
The Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union vice-president, Catherine Caine, who acts as an advocate for DSP claimants, said only a small proportion of the 41,000 people who were rejected last year would have been rejected because they did not qualify.
Caine said people on jobseeker go without critical things like medication while they wait for their claims or appeals to be processed.
“If jobseeker was at a living rate, this wouldn’t matter so much. If jobseeker was adequate, this would be less life and death,” she said.
Services Australia spokesperson Hank Jongen said the DSP is a “complex payment to process” and apologised to anyone waiting “longer than they should be”.
“Each DSP claim requires careful consideration of the provided medical evidence by Services Australia’s health professionals, who are trained to assess the evidence against the program rules. This can take time,” he said.
“People aren’t alone in this process. We have specialist staff and social workers who can help people with more complex circumstances and who need extra assistance, especially to connect to other support services.”
