Bill Shorten hopes thousands of new Services Australia staff will improve agency

Bill Shorten says it will take time to turn Services Australia around.  (ABC News: Matt Roberts)

Thousands of new staff joining Services Australia are already turning around an agency struggling with recent performance and cultural problems, according to Government Services Minister Bill Shorten.

The federal government has met its target of recruiting 3,000 new employees for Services Australia, after making the $228 million pledge late in 2023.

Wait times for Australians calling the agency had blown out to an average of more than 40 minutes, a massive number of unprocessed claims were stuck in the system, and the Robodebt scandal cast a long shadow over the agency.

“We’ve got a backlog of over a million payments, I’d want to get that number down, I really want to get waiting times on phone calls down,” Mr Shorten told the ABC.

“But let’s give us the next six months, I don’t expect new staff to produce miracles.

“The old staff have been doing a lot with basically not a lot of support from government.

“The analogy I would use is I think human services in Australia, for the last decade have been like one of those big ships stuck in the Suez Canal — it takes a little bit of time to turn it round.”

Since November, call wait times have dropped to around half an hour and tens of thousands of Medicare and social security claims have been processed as staffing numbers started to grow.

Almost 4,000 staff have been recruited by Services Australia in that period, taking into account the extra staffing commitment and natural attrition within the agency.

Mr Shorten said the increase in staff numbers would help improve culture in the agency, which had taken a battering as a result of budget cuts and the Robodebt saga.

“The morale has been in the toilet,” he said.

“There’s a lot of individuals doing a lot of great things, a lot of people have each other’s back, but they’ve been let down, I think, by a culture of treating public servants as second class, treating welfare recipients as second class — this sort of economic rationalism which says that everything can be sent off to a contracted call centre, and don’t worry about the people.

“That must have an effect on morale.”

The new staff will be deployed to call centres and offices across the country, including in regional centres such as Townsville and Alice Springs.

Among the new recruits in Melbourne is Andrew Jose, who used to work in real estate and started training last month.

The legacy issues at Services Australia, including the fallout from Robodebt program, do not phase him.

“The only pressure that we’re feeling at the moment is really being able to understand the things that we need to do, to be able to deliver the best service that we possibly can for the customers,” he told the ABC.

Fran Blackburn has also joined the team, with previous experience in real estate and teaching.

She said the job was an easy fit for her.

“I was looking for something that aligned with my values, and I’ve also had a lot of experience working with the public,” she said.