New staff welcomed to Services Australia

UP TO 11 new positions have been created at Services Australia’s Bendigo office to meet local demand for support.

Appointed in January this year, the new Service Officers come from a range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Australia-wide, 3,000 jobs have been filled to boost staff levels at Services Australia, at a cost of $228 million to the federal government.

Minister for NDIS Bill Shorten said it was great to meet the new Services Australia staff working at the Bendigo branch.

“People in Bendigo, people across Victoria, people across Australia have a human right to be able to access help from government services,” Mr Shorten said.

“Problem is, in the past eight or nine years we’ve seen the number of staff reduced and yet the demand is still pretty constant.”

The new staff were introduced to help customers access services such as Centrelink assistance and payments.

Mr Shorten said over a million phone calls are made to Services Australia every week and that he hoped the staffing boost would help to reduce customer wait times.

“We’re starting to see some modest reduction in waiting times now,” he said. “Late last year the average waiting time was somewhere around the mid-30 minutes to even longer.”

“Now it seems to be under 30 minutes – but one, I get it’s an average which means there’s longer; and two, I still think that’s too long.”

But Services Australia could stand to see internal organisational benefit from the boost to their workforce, with new staff expected to take the pressure off existing employees.

“At the end of the day, you can’t expect you can’t expect quality human services for the nation if you don’t treat the people working in the services with dignity,” Mr Shorten said.

A new Enterprise Agreement for Australian public services is expected to come in effect later this month which will see pay increases and improved conditions for public service staff.

“We want to give people a career in the public service,” Mr Shorten said.

“I think this next generation of public servants starting their journeys, their careers here in Bendigo, I think it’s an exciting time for citizens and for staff.”