Backlog of Over 1 Million Claims at Services Australia Will Be Eased by New Staff

Australians who have made claims with Services Australia face a long wait for approvals with over one million claims still to be assessed by Services Australia, which has conducted mass hirings to ensure a dent is made in the huge backlog over the coming months. Services Australia, formerly the Department of Human Services is the agency responsible for delivering Centrelink and Medicare payments and age pensions to eligible clients. It is amid a staffing crisis brought on by a post-COVID hangover, outages with the myGov portal, what some critics view as succession planning failures, and an under-investment in human resources. Services Australia’s Chief Executive David Hazlehurst told a Senate estimates hearing on Feb. 14 that he was “optimistic” the agency would be able to wrangle the number of claims to a manageable level over the next few months, on the back of the receipt of $228 million (US$147 million) in federal funding used to hire additional staff....