‘Huge concern’: Unanswered calls to Centrelink and Medicare hit 11 million as wait times balloon

More than 11 million Centrelink calls went unanswered in the year to April 2024, almost twice as many as the year before, according to Services Australia data.

On the other end of the line, unwell welfare recipients and those struggling to pay for food and rent are reportedly spending hours on the phone, yet to experience the impact of a massive Services Australia staffing boost in February.

Congestion messages — the automated recording that tells people waiting in the phone queue that staff are too busy — will refer callers to online services before the call automatically disconnects.

There were 11,268,048 of those congestion messages in the year to March 31, 2024 — up from 6,997,300 the year before — on Centrelink’s social security and welfare lines alone.

Of those 11 million unanswered calls, nearly two million were to the disabilities, sickness and carers line, and people who did manage to get through on that line waited an average of 47 minutes.

Those massive figures do not include unanswered calls for Medicare and Centrelink aged care clients, who were hung up on more than a million times — a 27,500 per cent increase on the previous year when just 4067 people received the congestion message.

Services Australia told 7NEWS.com.au the number of unanswered calls has now halved since January, but for those who continue to get the congestion messages the improvement is imperceptible.

As one person seeking parental leave payments tweeted on Monday: “It’s really fun that Centrelink keeps emailing to say ... we need to call them. Even more fun that I’ve tried calling them every day for the last week, and it just hangs up.”

Another person — who was calling over a reoccurring problem “that can’t be fixed in the Centrelink app or website” — expressed a similar frustration after hearing the congestion message sending her back to the online services.

“Your solution is to call that number? And do what? Keep calling and getting hung up on again until I go insane?” she tweeted earlier this month.

“There’s no queue, there’s no callback service. It puts the responsibility for fixing a Centrelink mistake on me, and then demands that I use hours of my time to fix it.”

Another person tweeted last month: “It’s like Centrelink is uncountable via phone, but I will lose my payments if I don’t talk to someone. I can’t just take a potential week off (work) just to try to hopefully get through.”

New hires battle backlog

Services Australia said thousands of extra staff had been hired by February, and by April they had been trained to take calls and process claims, following recommendations made during the robodebt inquiry.

But their priority thus far has been to get through a mammoth backlog of claims — which has been cut in half in the last three months and is now nearly back to normal levels, 7NEWS understands.

Services Australia general manager Hank Jongen also told 7NEWS.com.au that the “use of congestion messaging has halved since January”.

He also noted wait times are down.

“Overall, Centrelink call wait times have fallen from an average of 31 minutes in January to about 25 minutes in June, depending on the day,” he said.

But even if congestion messages were reduced to just several million a year, Australian Council of Social Services acting CEO Edwina MacDonald the situation is still dire for too many vulnerable people.

“In some cases, people are calling because their payments have been reduced or cut off, preventing them from paying their rent or buying food,” MacDonald told 7NEWS.com.au.

“Long call wait times are a big problem because that means people who need support cannot get the help they need.

“It’s of huge concern that there were over 11 million congestion messages, which block the caller, telling them to try again another time because the lines are too busy.

“We welcomed the investment of $1.8 billion to hire 3000 new staff, and it is good to see some wait times are coming down.

“While it’s good to see this progress, many are still waiting far too long. The government must continue to invest in Services Australia including by employing and retaining skilled staff, after many years of cuts to this essential service.”

Fresh data on unanswered calls and wait times will be released by Services Australia next week, and is set to reveal exactly how much of an impact the investment in the government agency has had.