When Maryanne Watts applied for jobseeker earlier this year, she knew it wouldn’t be a smooth process. She had been a Centrelink worker in the 1990s and had received income support in recent years.
But even she was shocked at how difficult it was to get her application processed – even when she was about to run out of money.
Watts, 60, lives on acreage in rural Queensland about 110km from Bundaberg. Prior to Covid, she participated in Workforce Australia’s small business assistance program while on jobseeker, working on an enterprise to help regional artists put their work online.
When Covid hit, she accessed her superannuation early and dropped off income support. But within 18 months the super had run out, so she applied for jobseeker again.
“The first time it got held up was because they had asked for bank account details from the 23rd of February,” Watts says. The earliest date on the bank statement she had provided was 9 March.
“I hadn’t actually had any transactions between the 23rd and the ninth. But because the date of the 23rd wasn’t on it, they didn’t accept it. So I had to go further back.”
Watts only knew this tiny administrative technicality might have delayed her application because she called Centrelink to follow up on its progress.
The Centrelink worker told her they had marked the application as urgent and said it would be processed as soon as possible, Watts says. Otherwise, she could be waiting for more than three months for her first payment.
After another couple of weeks, she called again. This time, she was told to supply an extra mortgage statement. Despite its size, Watts’ property is worth significantly less than the maximum allowed under the jobseeker assets test.
Amid this, she had mortgage repayments looming at a time she couldn’t afford the fuel to drive to the nearest town and back.
“Every day, you try not to think about money, you try to get on with other stuff, whatever,” Watts says. “But it’s always there. It’s this tension that’s always in your body.”
Centrelink staff told her three times that they were marking her application for urgent processing due to financial hardship. There were text messages telling her that someone would get in contact with her about her application. “But they didn’t,” Watts says.
She says a Centrelink worker later told her that despite what the text messages said, their policy was to wait for the applicant to call.
Kristin O’Connell, a spokesperson for the Antipoverty Centre, said Watts’ experience was very common.
“What we know from people who have an urgent need for support is that it is nearly impossible to get through the Centrelink bureaucracy to get that support as quickly as you need it,” O’Connell says. “This is not an outlier situation.”
A key problem was understaffing of the call centres, O’Connell says.
Centrelink call waiting times have blown out over the past 12 months. Data tabled in Senate estimates in May showing that the number of “congestion messages” on the Centrelink phone lines in the first nine months of this financial year had increased by 25% on last year’s total. It rose from 5.59m congestion messages in 2021-22 to 6.99m as at 31 March this year.
Call waiting times discouraged people from expediting their claims, fixing errors, getting help or clarification and ultimately from seeking income support at all, O’Connell says.
This was compounded by applicants’ information being recorded incorrectly, vulnerability indicators not being marked on applications or not being heeded and recipients receiving contradicting advice from staff, including about whether they had provided all the necessary information.
Watts says she spent at least an hour waiting on hold every time she called, which was at 8am – the minute the phone lines opened for the day. If she called any later, she received a congestion message.
After six weeks of relentless following up, Watts’ “urgent” application was finally approved.
For some people, though, the wait is vastly longer, with O’Connell saying her own application for the disability support pension took 10 months of similar back and forth, as she followed up diligently every two weeks on her claim, only to be frequently told she needed to provide more information.
“Because of all of the work I do supporting other people with this process, I know that I am not alone,” O’Connell says.
Services Australia’s spokesperson, Hank Jongen, said the majority of jobseeker claims were processed within two weeks.
“We’re sorry to those who are waiting longer. This is our busiest time of year with tax time and millions of families balancing their payments,” Jongen said.
“We sincerely apologise to Ms Watts and have extended the offer to work directly with her to ensure she’s receiving all available support.
“We’re actively recruiting but our staffing is returning to more regular levels now that pandemic-era work and associated extra resourcing has concluded. We’ve bolstered our emergency response capability with 850 staff directly supporting frontline service delivery. We’re drawing from this to help meet current demands.”
The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, and the government services minister, Bill Shorten, have also been approached for comment.
