Why people are furious with Centrelink's latest ploy to recover debt
People are furious with Centrelink’s latest decision to hire 1,000 staff members from labour-hire firm to help recover debts and enforce compliance on welfare recipients.
The move has been heavily criticised by the public sector union, which labelled the move as an example of the government “privatising our safety net”.
But a spokesperson for the Department of Human Service (DHS) said this was nothing new or unusual, with private contractors often used to cover “temporary surges”.
The exercise comes a month after the government announced 250 outsourced staff would be added to the call centre, which has struggled with waiting times.
Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) national secretary, Nadine Flood, was highly critical of the moves to outsource the roles, saying it was “new and scandalous”.
“Robo-debt was an absolute disaster for both DHS staff and the community – the Turnbull government is trying to abdicate their responsibility for this debacle by outsourcing the mop-up to a private company,” Flood told Guardian Australia.
“Labour hire has no place in public services – the Turnbull government needs to lift its arbitrary cap on public sector employment so that the community can have the services it needs,” she said.
DHS spokesperson Hank Jongen said the extra resource that would be used to hire the outsourced staff would help strengthen the integrity of the department.
“To meet this commitment, the Department of Human Services has engaged additional workers on a contract basis to support the temporary surge in workload as these measures are implemented,” Jongen said.
“This is not new, the department has engaged contractors over many years for specialist services and to support day-to-day operations to help fill short-term requirements for finite periods.”
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