Fun With Centrelink

I thought it might be fun to document my experience with Centrelink and their associated partners via Workforce Australia before my brain naturally removes negative experiences from my memory to replace them with happy ones.

Anyone who has used Centrelink online will know that it is written in a weird form of the English language that is spoken fluently by government officials but which rarely makes sense to ordinary people. Having tried to navigate the online maze of making a claim for Jobseeker, I decided I needed a human to speak to. I had many questions, the “help” pages were not specific enough to my situation, so I popped into my local Centrelink office. It was surprisingly empty, I was expecting to have to queue up for a while. I found out quite quickly why this was the case. I was immediately called up to speak to a person behind the counter, who was quite helpful and polite and said I had to go and see her colleague at the next desk.

I shuffled over to said colleague and told her my situation. “You can make a claim online.” was the response. Well, of course I knew this already, so I asked the questions I needed to ask. “Just apply online and put all the information in.” came the next instruction. This, I soon discovered, was her standard answer to any query put to her, so I just turned around and walked out, feeling fairly despondent that I couldn’t be heard by a real person. I formed the opinion that Centrelink could make vast savings on salaries by simply replacing staff like this with a simple sign that says “Please make all claims online and don’t come back here again”.

The next day I tackled making the claim online, which took almost four hours. This is mostly because you have to read most things at least twice to make sense of what they are asking. Two days later they emailed asking for more information, which was provided. Then came the tempting invitation to sign up to Workforce Australia and pay a visit to their partner, which was Employment Plus, an arm of the Salvation Army. This arrangement is ostensibly to help you find a job, but its real purpose is to make sure you are meeting your obligations to justify the pitiful amount that is Jobseeker. They were the enforcer, not the helper. They were the Workhouse Master to my Oliver Twist. Except I dare not ask for more.

My first meeting with Employment Plus didn’t start well at all. Firstly, the address given to me by the Centrelink contact was for a tobacconist on the main street. I then searched on Google Maps (and Apple Maps) and found the correct address. I tried following the walking directions, but while they are great at sending you to a location in a 2D plane, they have no idea what floor it is on. So I walked up and down, inside the shopping centre, outside the shopping centre looking for this magical place. Eventually I found it, nestled amongst the vacant shops that surrounded it. Inside there were three very unhappy looking people. One of them tells me to have a seat, so I do. Minutes pass by, extremely slowly. These unhappy people type away at their screens, not interacting with each other at all. I have never seen an office with zero interaction between team members like this. I think I’d last a week in a place like this.

Eventually I am called up by one of them. Normally when going to see someone about a service they provide, the expectation is to be told what they can do for me, or what I can expect from the process. No, their starting pitch was that I need to fulfill these obligations or expect penalties such as cessation of payments or similar. Yes, they start with the stick, not the carrot. After seeing my CV, she then proceeded to suggest jobs I was not suited to. I said yes anyway, just give them my contact details. I felt that they assumed everyone that came to see them was lazy, stupid, or both. It was a frightful experience.

Some days pass, and I get the occasional automated email from Employment Plus with tips (clearly aimed at people who have never job searched before). I know how to write a CV and a cover letter. I have hired enough people and read through enough CVs and cover letters to know what works and what doesn’t. In the meantime, I dutifully entered my jobseeking activity into the Workforce Australia portal.

More days pass, and I get a message from Centrelink saying my claim has been assessed. Hooray! I log in to read the outcome – DENIED.

Very soon afterwards, an automated email arrived from Employment Plus, saying I was no longer with them and my next appointment with them was no longer required.

From this experience I can only come to one conclusion. Government agencies are only concerned with helping you find a job (and I use that sentence loosely, as the help is minimal to non existent) when they are giving you money. If they are not giving you money, you’re on your own.

The whole experience was a total waste of time. I suspect if I had got to speak to a real (actually helpful) person at the start of the process, I might have been advised that I wasn’t eligible in the first place, and there was never a need to go through the entire dehumanising experience.