Government hearings have revealed that over 2 million Centrelink customers were sent to voicemail in a six month period, and regionally based customers could be facing the brunt of it. 

Federal budget estimate hearings held this week revealed that over seven million Centrelink callers were met with ‘congestion messages’ when calling the service hotline, a voice message that asks customers to call back later, before automatically ending the call. 

Data presented by Services Australia noted that congestion messaging had increased from 30 per cent of callers to 40 per cent in the last financial year.

Users of the phone line represent nine per cent of Services Australia customers. 

“Those nine per cent are coming through on the phone because they cannot deal with it online, because they cannot go into a service centre, because it might be a 50 kilometre to 100 kilometre round trip to get into a service centre,” Greens Senator Janet Rice said. 

As well as increased congestion messages, customers who get through to a caller face an average of 33 minutes wait time, or 52 minutes for people in families and parenting payments. 

“What do you have to say to the people for whom this is absolutely critical…they’re about to be evicted, they haven’t got any money…that can’t even get onto a phone wait time?” Senator Rice questioned. 

Deputy CEO of Services Australia Jarrod Howard said measures to fix the wait times are being looked at, in addition to funding for an extra 3000 staff. 

“If you’ve rung us multiple times, and congestion parameters are in place, then we’re going to prioritise you getting to the front of the queue than someone that just happened to get through on the time that congestion parameters were off,” Mr Howard said. 

“It’s not 40 per cent of customers who aren’t getting through, because there are lots of customers who deal with us online…and they can do that when congestion messages are applied.”

For several Centrelink and Services Australia circumstances, however, the matter cannot be dealt with online, with face-to-face or over the phone contact required. 

With the existing wait times and prioritisation of Covid-19 payments, Services Australia currently has a backlog of 1.1 million claims.  

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