Centrelink’s biggest ‘trick’ revealed in Senate hearing

Centrelink staffers have been forced to face a Senate estimates hearing over the bungled “robo-data” debt collection scheme and have revealed some very telling details about the agency’s call wait times.

While many have complained about being stuck on the phone with Centrelink for hours at a time, the welfare body claims its average call wait times are 14 minutes and 10 second.

Human Services staffer Barry Jackson told the hearing this is because every time someone is transferred through to another operator, the clock is wound back to zero.

“It becomes a new call coming into the system,” he said.

The hearing heard Centrelink callers have received 28 million “busy signals” and 4.1 million abandoned calls so far this financial year.

Labor senator Louise Pratt pressed Centrelink boss Kathryn Campbell on the issue.

“So you don’t add the two times together as an illustration of the total time someone has been on the phone?” she asked.

Campbell said Centrelink placed more importance on making sure callers were transferred through to the right department.

“If we do a transfer on those occasions the wait time is recommenced, but we work very hard to make sure we don’t do that,” she told senators.

What do you think about this? Is it fair? Or should they add the total call time together?