Yahoo Finance Centrelink recipient ‘sick with anxiety’ after payments abruptly cut off
Millions of phone calls to Centrelink are going unanswered, leading some recipients to call for urgent action.
A former academic is among those calling for “emergency measures” to fix Centrelink, after she was left “traumatised” this week when her JobSeeker payments were suspended.
South Australian resident Meredith said the suspension of her $958 fortnightly payment followed a miscommunication over her mutual obligation requirements, leaving her “distressed”.
Meredith suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and had been trying to apply for a Disability Support Pension on the recommendation of her psychologist. However, a bungle meant her application was rejected and her JobSeeker payments were abruptly cut off.
Do you have a Centrelink story to share? Contact tamika.seeto@yahooinc.com
Meredith has now been left with no income while she waits for her issue to be resolved and says it’s likely she’ll have to dip into her savings to get by.
“I’ve got a meagre amount of money behind me for emergencies,” Meredith told Yahoo Finance. “It’ll probably leave me in a situation where I’ll be scraping to pay the rent and seeing if I could get [to a] food bank and not use very much power, if any.”
Meredith said her previous conversation with a Centrelink support officer triggered her PTSD and she now felt “sick with anxiety” about contacting the agency again.
RELATED
Pensioner’s ‘demoralising’ fight to get through to Centrelink as wait times skyrocket
Centrelink increase an ‘insult’ to carers like George struggling with cost-of-living pressures
Meredith lives about 100 kilometres out of Adelaide and says there is no physical Centrelink office in the town she lives in. Her nearest office is a 20-minute drive away, but she doesn’t own a car so has to contact Centrelink over the phone.
She said it recently took her two days to get through to Centrelink’s phone line when she tried to call to ensure they had her correct information.
“I was getting hung up on all day, repeatedly,” she said. “I tried the trick that people were sharing on Twitter, which is to not have your caller ID shown, but even doing that didn’t work.
“Even when you ring at 8 o’clock in the morning - which is on the dot when the phone lines open - an hour has been the quickest time and it’s been up to an hour and a half. That’s when the phone lines open, otherwise you don’t get through.”
‘Fix Centrelink now’
Meredith is one of more than 1,100 people who have signed a petition by the Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU) calling for emergency measures to “fix Centrelink now”.
Services Australia currently has a backlog of 1.1 million unprocessed claims. Last year, more than 7.4 million calls to the agency received a congestion message, while more than 2 million calls were terminated by customers who couldn’t get through.
With recipients struggling to access Centrelink services, the AUWU is calling on the government to suspend mutual obligations and debt recovery, and to reinstate COVID-era changes to asset tests, waiting periods and eligibility tests.
Services Australia responds
Services Australia general manager Hank Jongen apologised to those facing long wait times.
“Unfortunately, our phone wait times are longer than we’d like and we sincerely apologise to people who are waiting longer than they should,” Jongen told Yahoo Finance.
“We encourage anyone who needs to speak with us to try again. People are getting through and our staff are working hard to answer calls.”
The agency has now hired 3,000 new staff and Jongen said he expected claim-processing times and call wait times would begin to ease by April as staff became fully trained.
Services Australia said it was unable to comment on Meredith’s individual case.
“While we can’t comment on individual cases, we extend an offer to work directly with the customer to ensure she’s getting the support she is eligible for,” Jongen said.
“We are here to help people in financial hardship, and encourage anyone in these circumstances to contact us to chat to one of our staff members who can also connect people to social work support.”
Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467.
Follow Yahoo Finance on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, and subscribe to our free daily newsletter.
