In February, the Department of Social Services had a backlog of over 1.3 million unprocessed Medicare and Centrelink claims.
Now, the government agency responsible for the services says it has reduced that figure by 66% — meaning fewer people are waiting to receive a government payment or subsidy.
The Department said call wait times to Medicare and Centrelink have also been significantly reduced.
However, social service advocates argue more needs to be done to address barriers impacting vulnerable Australians, like lengthy wait times.
Claim processing
Nearly 500,000 Australians are currently waiting on a Medicare or Centrelink claim to be resolved. This figure is down from around 1.35 million earlier this year.
In the first three weeks of July, the average JobSeeker claim took 6 days to process, 18 days faster than the average across the 2018/19 financial year (for the equivalent payment, Newstart).
Young people had an average wait of 14 days for a Youth Allowance claim to be processed, down from 27 days across 2018/19.
Call wait times
Centrelink received 5.2 million calls between January and July. 34% took over 30 minutes to answer.
For the week of 15-21 July, the average wait time was 26 minutes, “depending on the day”.
Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said “there’s more to do”, but that overall services were “making significant” progress.
It comes after 3,000 department staff were hired last year. The Government aims to hire another 7,500 employees over the next two years.
Opposition
The new data compares 12 months of pre-COVID figures, and data from the last financial year, to three weeks in July this year.
Shadow Government Services Minister Paul Fletcher accused the Government of using “handpicked” statistics as “spin”.
“These new figures do not resemble a success story or transformation at Services Australia of any kind,” Fletcher said.
He argued that service standards have “plummeted” despite the government “recruiting thousands more staff.”
Advocates
Economic Justice Australia is a not-for-profit legal organisation that assists social services recipients.
CEO Kate Allingham said that by the time a person calls Medicare or Centrelink, they have often “reached a crisis point”.
Allingham warned when it’s “too hard” to get through to services, “the situation of a person in crisis worsens”, causing feelings of “absolute hopelessness”.
