Centrelink better prepared for ‘extraordinary levels of demand’

Social Services Minister Anne Ruston says Centrelink is now more prepared for the “unprecedented” demand on its resources than last week. Thousands of “intent to claim” applications were lodged with Centrelink as scores of Australians were left without work amid the coronavirus outbreak as welfare services were stretched to breaking point. Ms Ruston told Sky News “things are improving significantly but we certainly thank Australians for their patients under their extraordinary levels of demand”. She said Centrelink’s struggle to cope with the mass number of claims was “not a matter of being blindsided.. just a matter of pure capacity”. “No one was ever going to have that kind of capacity,” she said. “We have been ramping up now for months because we realised this was a potential outcome. “We have increased capacity and we also seemed to have flattened out demand so hopefully we will be able to give people who need to access our services a less stressful experience this week than we saw early last week.” Image: Getty

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