O'Keefe: Bill Shorten has broken Services Australia 05:15

Is it just me or has Bill Shorten broken Services Australia? Because right across the board, things have gotten markedly worse for Australians when it comes to accessing government services under this Labor government. Now, please, I need to hear your stories on this 131873. What has it been like for you to deal with Services Australia?

Because once again, we asked for Mr Shorten to join us on the program to explain things. He was unavailable. He's promised to come on at some point next week, maybe. But I think, you know what, let's discuss this now, because there are lots and lots of examples about how bad things have become. And here's a few of them. So it now takes 400% longer for prescription shopping claims to be processed by Services Australia under the Albanese Labor government than it did under the Coalition.

For aged care claims, 345% longer for people to claim things through the aged care providers or the aged care services at Services Australia. Medicare eligibility claims are taking 242% longer. And PBS patient refunds, so your medications, those claims are now taking 215% longer.

This is under-shortened compared to under-Morrison. Now, struggling families are missing out on vital payments too to help with the cost of living crisis. So new figures have revealed that Services Australia is sitting on more than 232,000 claims that are yet to be processed after more than 90 days. So there are 232,000 claims just sitting there

Yet to be processed and they've been sitting there for more than 90 days. Surely that's not good enough. Especially for a government run by a party that supposedly reckons its service delivery is superior to the other lot. Now who would have thought that a Liberal government is more efficient on this front? Now we've been inundated with calls from listeners who've been kept on hold or hung up.

by Centrelink. Have you been hung up on by Centrelink? Because here are some stats. Almost 601,000 Australians who tried calling Centrelink between the 1st of January and the 1st of May this year were kept on hold for longer than an hour. 601,000 Australians sitting there trying to call Centrelink and they're sitting there for more than an hour.

And the blowouts are right across the board. The disability line. It took 20 minutes to get a hold of someone in 2021. Now it takes 47 minutes. Employment services. Hey, I need a job. 24 minutes it used to take. Now it's up to 50 minutes.

families and parenting if you're trying to get parental leave or maternity leave or whatever it is now it takes close to an hour it used to take closer to 20 minutes aged care help if you're trying to navigate the craziness of a cat and rads and daps and everything else that goes along with nursing homes 21 minutes it used to take to get a hold of someone now 47 minutes how is this acceptable

How is it acceptable? In the same period from January 1 to the 1st of May, over 1.1 million Australians were hung up on before they were able to even speak to a human. Now, not only is that rude, that is 1.1 million Australians who need government support and need to deal with government that were just hung up on.

But look, Bill Shorten's a good bloke. I quite like him, but he's not fixing the NDIS and he's making Services Australia worse. Now, I don't usually bring up the off-air on off-air, but we sent some listener queries to Bill Shorten's office, right? A couple of weeks ago. And we asked Bill Shorten to, please, these Centrelink problems are bad. Can you help them? Well, they haven't even acknowledged our multiple requests for help. None of the listeners, none of the things that you sent me

Nobody has been contacted by the minister's office or anyone within Centrelink. It is unacceptable. And I know Hank Jongen comes in and, you know, wants to take everybody's questions, just ask Hank and all the rest of it. Well, he's running an appalling organisation and he can do as much public relations as he want, especially on this radio station if he wants to, fine. But these numbers show that Hank is failing. Bill is failing.

Anyway, it's not just our listeners. Go and have a look at the Services Australia Facebook page. It is a bloodbath. Just a few comments. Erin, hello Services Australia. Every time I try to call through, the waiting music stops at 30 minutes. I've now been on the phone for an hour and 20. I'm hoping I'm still in the queue. This happened yesterday as well. Kerry, I was put on hold for the third time in two hours. Still waiting for them to sort out my exemption because...

He's working and has a traineeship. How hard is that?