Australia Post may do Centrelink’s job

[Banjo]

Australia Post may do Centrelink’s job

Australia Post would take over the front office operations of Centrelink under a wider plan to consolidate service ­de­livery agencies and secure budgetary savings to be considered by the federal government.

A spokesman for Treasurer Joe Hockey has confirmed the proposal would be looked at within the work of the Commission of Audit along with other options for savings on how the government provides welfare and other services.

The overhaul, first raised by Mr Hockey earlier this year, coincides with his proposal, revealed in The Australian Financial Review on Friday, to hand the responsibility for administering the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) to Medibank Private in order to avoid establishing a new bureaucracy.

Mr Hockey told Financial Review Sunday on Channel Nine on Sunday that Medibank Private already provided a range of services and would be able to contract to provide services as the NDIS developed.

“We’ve been upfront about having a Commission of Audit; we will do what we have to do to repair the budget,” Mr Hockey said.

“We will honour all of our election commitments. They’re not clashing with each other. We’ve been very upfront; we’ve said we’re going to have to fix up the budget and we will fix up the budget.”

Read more.

www.afr.com/p/national/australia_post_may_do_centrelink_6fSH5OaBAAQWRIyQY3MVDO

[Deleted]

What next will posties be carrying out the Job Capacity and medical assessments? How the hell is a postie going to help you if you need help with a complicated problem.

[aussieinusa]

What an appalling proposition. Aus Post are incompetent enough at handling passport applications and int'l money transfers -- they can barely handle getting parcels from one place to another, even -- so how their clueless staff will handle the complexity of the welfare system in this country, I do not know.

CL staff whose full-time job it is understand the horrible spaghetti-tangle of a system barely manage it. Every time I speak to someone there, I'm told at least one thing that directly contradicts what someone else told me! And they're not also having to remember how to check passport applications and handle money transfers.

Maybe they're thinking of doing something like the Medicare-Centrelink merger where they're in the same offices, but divided down the middle with separate staff. Maybe that would've worked once, but Australia Post has sold off all its best buildings to look more profitable now. So they'd be paying a whole lot of expensive 'lease break' costs so they can sign new leases for even bigger premises?? And retrofit in all the mail sorting stuff?? How on earth would that save money???

Leave Aus Post to do what they're good at, i.e. selling cheap crap made in China. They're not up to much else.

[Banjo]

Post office can't do Centrelink job: Labor

LABOR says local post offices won't be capable of taking over Centrelink's shopfront services.

Labor human services spokesman Doug Cameron says Centrelink is a very specialised organisation for delivering services to those in need.

"I know my local post office would in no way be capable of delivering that service," Senator Cameron told ABC radio.

The government is reportedly considering allowing Australia Post offices to deliver Centrelink shopfront services under a plan to consolidate service delivery agencies and achieve budget savings.

Treasurer Joe Hockey is also proposing Medibank Private handle administration of the new National Disability Insurance Scheme to avoid creating another bureaucracy.

Senator Cameron said Australia Post just could not be handed the cost and responsibility for Centrelink because of the government's ideological views on outsourcing government services

"This is people who can't find work, people who have significant personal problems in some cases. I don't think the local post office is capable of dealing with that," he said.

www.perthnow.com.au/news/breaking-news/post-office-cant-do-centrelink-job-labor/story-fnhrvfuw-1226748025795

[zingzingzing]

The liberals have said it before, it's all about being small government.

[latindancer]

This really takes the cake for a ridiculous idea. I'm speechless.

[aussieinusa]

Exactly, latindancer: anyone motivated by practicality / pragmatism would dismiss it out of hand.

It is purely ideologically driven, like zingzingzing said... and when any ideology is taken to its furthest logical conclusion, it's extremism. Extremist 'small government' = "any private company can deliver any service far better than government could!" Which ignores the fact that for business the bottom line is always profit, but that public services are paid for by the citizenry through taxes, which isn't a commercial arrangement. (Although it is a free market where you can choose exactly how much tax you pay for those services... well, if you're rich, anyway.) And we end up with insane ideas like Australia Post being given whole departments' functions to run, then sold off so shareholders can profit.

Though if they're really serious about 'small government', I'd suggest starting by halving the number of MPs and Senators -- do we really get $200K+ per year value out of every single one of them? -- then forcing all those near-useless small councils to merge like Brisbane City Council has; removing all the duplication and buck passing between federal-state-local government...

Why do they never say that the start of 'small government' = fewer politicalians on high salaries with their expensive offices and government cars??

[Banjo]

Don’t pass the Centrelink parcel

Any debate about a merger between Centrelink and Australia Post, or leveraging the considerable footprint of each agency, needs to focus on the services we expect from Centrelink and the nature of people’s interaction with Centrelink.

Australia Post and Centrelink both deliver important public services in their own right (“Post, Centrelink merger backed”, AFR, October 29).

If Centrelink were just a transactional service, there may be some merit in considering an expansion of Centrelink services.

However, Centrelink is not just a transactional service. Accordingly, it’s hard to see a way for Australia Post to successfully take on the Centrelink discretionary decision-making and service delivery roles without a major loss to people who need help.

Australia has one of the most complex welfare systems in the OECD.

This level of complexity requires skilled and trained employees to apply social security law in a fair and impartial manner.

One concern about outsourcing this work to Australia Post is whether the employees at the counter could be expected to understand all the day-to-day Australia Post issues as well as all the legal and administrative issues that are currently Centrelink’s responsibility.

Centrelink is the most complained about agency in the country and Australia Post is the second-most complained about. In 2011-12, Centrelink accounted for 28 per cent of all complaints to the Commonwealth Ombudsman and Australia Post accounted for 18 per cent. Many of the Centrelink complaints related to staff shortages and lengthy waiting times for service, decision-making and review of decisions. Shifting Centrelink services to Australia Post won’t make these problems go away, it will merely exacerbate them.

Maree O’Halloran
National Welfare Rights Network
Surry Hills, NSW

www.afr.com/p/opinion/don_pass_the_centrelink_parcel_j2vwzDw8QgPpyFa5mbFiaO

[aussieinusa]

^^ Yes, that's all very true, Banjo.

Also, could you imagine discussing all the private personal info CL demand at the counter of your post office??!? How horrid would it be to inform an Aus Post employee about your change in circumstances and get accurate advice from THEM. CL staff don't always get it right, but Aus Post staff are in a whole other league when it comes to stuff-ups. But if this goes ahead their stuff-ups won't just effect your parcels or overseas funds transfers; they'll effect your pension too!

Plus where would they put the CL social workers in a post office? Aus Post made the 'competitive' decision to divest itself of all the big old buildings that could've housed other services under the same roof, and now seems to prefer tiny storefronts they pay Westfield handsomely for over anything resembling a traditional post office. There's no space for anyone who requires a desk, let alone a private space for the people in crisis to discuss things with a social worker and maybe, hopefully, get some help.

Maybe Big Tony thinks all those big old post office buildings are how Aus Post still run their operations?! Lord knows it's unlikely he's posted a letter himself in a very long time... he has his helpmeets at home and his electoral staff at the office to do all that menial stuff for him, so he can get on with the fun runs, hardhat photo ops, budgie smuggler photo ops, and big important policy ideas like this one.

[Deleted]

Will the posties have access to all our private information, will they be able to read through our job capacity asssessments and medical history. This AUssie post idea shows the Liberials are total bastards , They only care about the well off. LAbors not much better these days either. l am dreading what they have planned in next years budget for the DSP.

[latindancer]

Australia Post doing this would not work as the situation is at the moment. However this statement by Hockey may be a chilling hint of how much he plans to cut services to be in the future.

[Banjo]

Aren't most of the smaller Australia Post offices franchised out?

[aussieinusa]

Nov 2, 2013 16:46:01 GMT 7 Banjo said:

Aren't most of the smaller Australia Post offices franchised out?

Yes, a lot of them are. So you wouldn't even be discussing, say, your recent relationship split due to domestic violence and how to get an emergency payment to get a new place, with an Aus Post employee. You'd be having a nice chat about very personal stuff with a small business person who's there to make a living. Some of them might be decent, compassionate people who'd actually try to help... but you can't expect them to know all the ins and outs of CL's systems AS WELL AS all the ins and outs of Aus Post's!

It's hard enough for full-time CL employees whose sole job is knowing CL's systems and how to use them to keep up with it all. It's such a huge, complex, bloated system; so many different payments, each with different rules and processes and procedures; some with different rules for different people... Aus Post isn't any better from what I can tell; there's a lot of services they supposedly offer that many frontline staff don't know how to use, and again, that's their full-time job. How any human being could keep track of BOTH huge convoluted systems, I don't know. Perhaps they've bred some super cyborg monkeys to do the job??

That's without getting into the privacy concerns of having to report very private, personal info to some local small business owner, because they're now CL's rep in town.

Then there's also the duty of care concerns. The businesses CL already does business with via the Job Network often don't seem to have the client's best interests in mind. They make money by placing a person in a job. Whether that job is something they're physically able to do doesn't matter; they make money from a job placement, not by telling someone, "you sound like you should be on DSP, or at least NewStart Incapacitated." Whether they can get adequate childcare when they go to work doesn't matter; they don't get paid to say, "this job isn't in the best interest of your children, let's find you a different one." Whether it'll lead to a productive life-long career path doesn't matter; they're not penalised for placing people in jobs that last barely long enough for them to collect their payment, then dump people back on the unemployment line again. And the mental health concerns over sticking already traumatised people in degrading and demoralising jobs doesn't rate a look-in at all.

I have this horror that if CL is made into part of a private company, there'll be similar performance payment nonsense put in place. Who knows what they'll 'incentivize' but whatever it is, the business will quickly optimise for that. And commercial imperative alone will mean that dealing with customers quickly is the priority; taking the time to explain complex rules to someone who needs time to understand it all is simply too costly for private companies to tolerate.

If this is indicative of the quality of Liberals' policy ideas, we really do need to be afraid.