Opinion piece by Melissa Donnelly, National Secretary Community and Public Sector Union
New mums footing medical bills while they waited to get their baby onto a Medicare card. People on hold for hours waiting for help, or not being able to have their call connected at all. Families cancelling trips because their passport wasn't processed in time. Veterans getting lost in a backlog of more than 41,000 claims. Robodebt.
These crises were the result of an APS that itself was in crisis.
Everywhere you looked, there were stories of Australians who had been let down by the public services they thought they could rely on. But this wasn't a mistake or a misstep. It was intentional policy design by a government that was hostile to the public service and public services.
The stories I've heard as the leader of the union representing public servants, came from the perspective of workers in this system - a system that was failing both its own workforce and the public.
During those years, public servants worked as best they could to keep the lights on and to support Australians while the government took an axe to everything in sight. But as the numbers of people working alongside you dwindle, and the backlogs and call queues grow, there is only so much you can do.
From just our Services Australia members alone, I heard from workers who weren't allowed to take two minutes to breathe after dealing with a heavy or distressing encounter. About their frustration with the way every second of their day was tracked and monitored. About the trauma many still have from Robodebt. And I heard about the fear some workers have when going to work after yet another act of violence or aggression in a Service Centre.
In short, I heard from workers who thought this job would be about helping people but instead found themselves caught in a cycle of survival, where compassion was forced to take a backseat to the demands of an overstretched system.
Late last year, the Albanese Labor Government invested an additional 3,300 jobs into Services Australia. For the first time in a long time, the agency wasn't facing cuts. The CPSU worked intensively to ensure these jobs would be funded beyond the most recent budget to provide certainty for both the agency and the public. And we were successful at doing that.
The CPSU wants to see Services Australia able to stand on its own two feet - a futureproofed agency that is ready, willing and able to respond to challenges that come their way. Whether that be a pandemic, floods, fires or something we can't foresee right now.
And while there is still a mountain of work to be done and more investment needed to get to that point, we're finally on the right track.
Quarterly performance data that was released this month has shown significant improvements. Centrelink calls are now being answered around 7 and a half minutes faster than in the first quarter of 2024, and Medicare calls 11 and a half minutes faster.
Congestion messages are down by nearly 80%.
And claims are being processed more quickly, with Paid Parental Leave claims now being processed within 3 days, down from 31 days. Aged Pension claims are being processed in 49 days, down from 84, and Youth Allowance claims are being processed in 10 days, down from 28.
These aren't just statistics though. These are mums and dads and students and pensioners, in places like Goulburn, Singleton and Townsville who are getting quicker and better access to the public services they need, when and where they need them.
This rebuilding is happening across all agencies and departments and Australians are beginning to reap the benefits. Just as Peter Dutton is starting to put his predictable plan for a bare bones public service on the table.
For public sector workers, this feels like groundhog day.
Because of course we've seen it all before. The waste, the damage, the outsourcing to their mates in big business. And the anti-public service mudslinging the Coalition and their cheerleaders, in places like the IPA, just cannot resist.
People are seeing through it though. Even Nikki Savva, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister John Howard and treasurer Peter Costello, said "[n]ow we have Dutton again complaining about the number of public servants who have been hired when, clearly, there is a demand for them to provide services and to provide advice to government."
Australians need and deserve high quality, effective and efficient public services, and our government needs frank and fearless public servants.
As the current government has continued to invest in the APS and in APS jobs, the capability and capacity of the public service has grown.
It's becoming less and less like the bare bones APS it was in later part of the Coalition years. And more like the APS Australians need and want - an APS that meets you where you're at and delivers the services you rely on in your day to day to life.
Whether that's in a regional town, a rural outpost or city centre - the public service and public service workers are there to support you and your community.
The CPSU is proud to have fought for and secured more jobs and better services into Townsville, Cairns, Toowoomba, Maryborough, Alice Springs, the Illawarra, the NSW North Coast, regional Victoria, Western Sydney, Melbourne, Southeast Queensland, Perth, Adelaide and yes, of course in Canberra.
This is good for Australia, and good for Australians.
Our public service should be a robust and dynamic workforce that functions right across this country meeting Australians where they are at and delivering them the public services that they rely on every day, in a way that works for them.
This opinion piece was first published in The Canberra Times on 11th November 2024.
