Mr TUDGE (Aston—Minister for Human Services) (15:35): May I start by agreeing with the shadow minister for human services on at least one thing, which is that we should be thankful we have such a strong social security safety net in this country. I think it is a mark of a modern, prosperous, generous society that we have such a system in place. Indeed, this system has saved thousands of people over the decades from going hungry, from going without shelter and from going without clothing. I think we should always reflect upon that and be very proud of the social security system that we have. That is probably where my agreement with the shadow minister ends—other than also agreeing with her that people with disabilities do not choose their disability. Of course they do not, and I think it is quite offensive that she would suggest we think otherwise. I would like to start my substantive remarks on this MPI by thanking the 35,000 DHS staff who work tirelessly in support of many of the people the shadow minister referred to. Whenever I am out visiting electorates or doing other community visits I try to make an effort to drop in to the local Centrelink centre, and typically I find very dedicated staff who are working in those organisations because they want to make a difference to people's lives. Often they are under stress, sometimes they are dealing with angry people and sometimes they are dealing with aggressive people. I think they do it incredibly professionally and I hope that they do not take the shadow minister's comments from today's MPI as a reflection upon their professionalism. It should not be a reflection on their professionalism. I think the Centrelink staff actually are a very professional group of people who are doing their best. Centrelink itself is in some respects the main government interface for millions of Australians. Our service centres and our call centres deal with thousands upon thousands of people every single day. About 600,000 interactions each day are done by Centrelink staff; 80,000 face-to-face contacts and almost 140,000 online transactions are conducted each day. In the process, they administer payments of about $150 billion. By and large, I think that the Centrelink operations overall do quite well. I am not suggesting that they are perfect—because they are not—but, overall, given the size of the Department of Human Services, it will never be perfect and will always be seeking to improve. The biggest change, which is occurring over the next few years and which has already started, is the digital transformation which is happening right now. This will mean that people will be able to interact with Centrelink much more seamlessly in the future. I will go into that a little bit more in just a minute. But I would point out that these are digital transformations that the Labor Party, in their six long years of government, never undertook. They had the opportunity to do so but never invested in those systems which would indeed make it much easier for many Australians to be able to interact with Centrelink. Ms Husar interjecting— Ms Burney interjecting— Ms Keay interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Coulton ): Order! I remind members that interjecting while not in their correct places is highly disorderly, and they are warned. Minister. Mr TUDGE: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let's have a look at the service standards from Centrelink today. That was indeed what the shadow minister was largely referring to in terms of how people are dealt with when they are applying for a Centrelink benefit, when they are having their process claimed and they are on the call centres and the like. I point out to begin with that the Department of Human Services met over 86 per cent of its KPIs last year. These KPIs are generally-agreed community standards. Many of them were actually set underneath the Labor governments, and we are delivering upon those, by and large. The average wait time when you go to a Centrelink office around the country is about 10 minutes. That is the average wait time when you go to a service centre office. Typically, if you go to a GP clinic or another type of service, that is not an unreasonable time to wait. The average call wait time at the moment is 11 minutes, when the KPI is 16 minutes. I admit that that figure is an average so of course you have a curve. Some people are waiting a shorter amount of time; other people are waiting a longer amount of time, but the average is 11 minutes. We are always looking to bring that figure down, and obviously that comes at a considerable cost. Do you know when the call wait times did actually blow out? They actually used to be—and the shadow minister is, I know, a relatively new member to this parliament—but the call wait times actually ballooned out in the Labor years. And the Australian National Audit Office found that between 2010-11 and 2011-12 the call wait times went from three minutes and five seconds out to 11 minutes and 45 seconds. That occurred under the Labor government, and that is the Australian National Audit Office who found this. Do you know why this occurred, why those wait times ballooned out? Because the Labor Party ripped out at that time 1,100 staff in order to do that, and that is when those call wait times ballooned out. Ms Burney interjecting— Mr TUDGE: I appreciate that the member for Barton is a very new member to this parliament but I think it is probably incumbent on her to know a little bit of the history in relation to that as well. Let me go to what we are doing overall, and this is the big system transformation that we are now referring to. Unlike the Labor Party when they were in government for six long years, we are investing a billion dollars to upgrade the welfare payment system. When this system is upgraded, it will make it so much easier for individual citizens to be able to interact with the Centrelink office. In many cases—and indeed we hope in most cases—they will never have to go to a Centrelink office, they will not have to call a call centre and they will not be waiting for their claims to be processed because they will be seamlessly done. Let me give you an example of how this might occur in the not too distant future. I will give the example of student processing. The member opposite mentioned the student claims—if you are putting in a claim for youth allowance or for Austudy and the like. At the moment, and certainly this was the case under the Labor Party when they were in government, they would put in a claim Ms Husar interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Lindsay is warned. Mr TUDGE: They would put in a claim, and they might even put that claim in online. Then that claim would be printed out at the other end, then manually entered into somewhere else. A person would have to pick up that claim. They would have to interrogate the ATO database to ensure that that person's parents' income did not go above a certain threshold. They might have to interrogate a university system to ensure their course load was equally truthful according to what was being said. That might take several weeks to do. In the meantime, of course, the student is ringing up and trying to find out where their claim is at. That is understandable. That creates a lot of time and a lot of effort. In the process, 40 per cent of those claims get rejected, in large part because the student does not understand their parental income. So a large part of those are automatically rejected once that is understood. But of course we have gone through that whole process to get that. In the near future, because of the investment which this government is making—which the Labor Party refused to make, despite knowing about these issues which were going on—a student will be able to put in a claim online. That claim will automatically interrogate the ATO database to find out what their income is and what their parents' income might be. It will also interrogate the university's course system so that the system itself understands what the course load is of that student. Then—literally, for many people—you will get an automatic response in terms of whether that claim is successful or otherwise. That is the picture of the future. And that is in the not too distant future, and that will occur because this government had the decency, the courage and the foresight to be investing in upgrading these Medicare payment systems. Of course, this builds upon the work which we have done in the myGov space. We now have 10 million people who are registered on myGov and who can now tell our system once and have those details updated not only for their Centrelink records but potentially for their Medicare records, their Child Support Agency records and elsewhere. It builds on the work we have done in the Medicare space, where 96 per cent of all claims are now done digitally. Swipe your card—that is all you have to do in order for your rebate to occur. We take these service standards very seriously. We are constantly trying to improve them and, in the future, there are going to be great steps forward in this. (Time expired)