Julie Bishop …?
May be after she has not been working for a bit and had some need to deal with MyGov or any of the linked services. Perhaps all MP’s should have to go through Centrelink to claim there allowances?
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Outsourcing Centrelink calls … wonderful! People who are fully conversive with Centrelink’s requirements across the board is the only way that Centrelink can truly move forward. Our service means a 60-90 minute phone call for anything! I don’t want to wait that long to then find that they can’t help. When uploading documents, we have no idea whether it has been received or accepted! An automated email or SMS could acknowledge receipt. If Centrelink want to minimise numbers going straight to their offices as would occur in country areas like where I live, then they need to ensure that the online and phone systems are fully monitored by staff who have the expertise and have a Community Services ethos!
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It is oft written that the way a government designs, funds, and oversees its services defines what they are really about as compared to what they are saying and claiming to get a vote or a dollar in a pocket. If allowed, even Blind Freddy should have a look at government’s real commitment to those dependent on Centrelink. Seems just above asylum seekers who don’t even get to hold on the phone according to so many posts and reports.
Now about outsourced profits…
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What a wonderful suggestion.
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Sorry to wake this thread up after so long. I just had to use myGov and finally got around to reading the Terms of use. They’re quite a hoot. For example:
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Speechless.
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You sound excited by the prospect? Not!
To access Centrelink, ATO etc these days on line you need to go through MyGov. It leaves little option unless you would like to join the long phone waits or queue at Centrelink in person.
The last on your list is exceptionally important
It is trying to say that if you update your contact details in your MyGov account you still need to go to the ATO, Medicare, Centrelink etc and update them separately for each government service! Don’t forget!
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And everytime I go to the Medicare site, it insists that I update or confirm my details.
Absolutely ridiculous.
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Have a problem with/on MyGov ring their help line.
If the problem is related to one of the linked government agencies (Centrelink, ATO, Medicare, etc) they instruct you need to ring the agency (or use their websites) to sort it and each is separate and never ‘talks’ to another.
OTOH if the problem is literally with the MyGov account and unless it changed since, they advise they cannot see any of it because of privacy reasons but you can try this, and that, and the other thing, and maybe something else, or even make a new MyGov account and start again.
Security? precious! The login one time code is sent to the mobile. If the mobile is lost or stolen too bad, report it and (re)register with MyGov and start again. Not happy to depend on the mobile? Use the secret questions option, but the ATO for one will not come to that ‘party’. Even if one ‘upgrades’ from an SMS code to secret questions the ATO will summarily disconnect as they do not support that ‘security’. Start with the secret questions option and the ATO will not want know your MyGoc account.
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I remain keen to encourage improvement to the MyGov and Centrelink systems starting with a suggestion I made some time back.
Booking all Parliamentary travel through Centrelink for cost control and receiving salary on a cashless debit card might also help with budgeting.
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The eight wonder of the world has occured.
I just logged on to MyGov and selected Medicare.
Instead of the extremely annoying requirement of confirming one’s details. it proceeds to the most recent claims.
Absolutely amazing.
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Generous applause? 
Yes “MyGov” leaves us all to wonder?
It’s Doubtful the inspiration it brings is awesome, or ranks up there with the achievements of the Great Pyramid of Giza or more recently the Panama Canal.
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I have just registered my voice recognition for 3rd time - as part of ‘standard’ phone call procedure - which only happens sometimes. But have to yell for machine at the other end to hear it - suggest booking a private room for this!. Sure that would mean my speaking voice will not be recognised anyway.
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Another article regarding the disgusting treatment of some Disability Support Pension applicants.
I guess the Government cannot support the “truly needy” like their mates with JobKeeper millions if disabled persons are eating into the piggy bank.
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I see no connection between the two.
There have been disputes over eligibility to DSP for the last 40 years to my knowledge and the media turning them into “human interest” articles all the while. Such articles may uncover real flaws in the system or may be pointing out that journalists and their readers are not doctors who make assessments nor do they know the relevant Act and guidelines and so are not qualified to have a useful opinion on who should be paid. They never do enough research to make clear which.
The same journalists will also jump on the reverse situation where a person who they think is fit and well enough to work receives a pension. This regularly becomes a political football where our fearless leaders line up to declare war on cheats while claiming compassion for the afflicted. The situation is complex and imperfect and the anomalies it generates depends largely on the prejudice of the observer.
The same journos will also exhort the government of the day to ensure that decision makers are better informed and better trained so they can do better. At the same time those journos will demand that public service overheads must be reduced to save money. Everyone is an expert of public service efficiency while few have any idea how to actually do it. Everyone is an expert on the policy required to administer the system but strangely half demand criteria must be tighter while the other half say looser.
In all these ways DSP eligibility is an ongoing invitation for the public to cry “aint ut terruble” and to get an emotive jolt of righteous indignation from the cheats getting away with it or the victims being mistreated, or both. It all sells newspapers and clicks.
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You have made your viewpoint fairly clear, but would you like to focus on the one report and suggest whether you think this is a sensationalist article or exposes a(nother) flaw where it is reported a number of doctors unanimously supported the application while the bureaucracy knocked it back?
If not for investigative journalism how many would even think very deeply about what happens and why. Sometimes they get it wrong yet they serve a useful purpose posing questions and sometimes exposing the fine art of stonewalling.
Perhaps she could become a pilot ferrying the PM and his front bench around considering it is their bureaucracy and all must be well with it, and her, so long as she does not exceed 30 hours per week flight time as PIC?
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I think it is a good example of the tensions and contradictions within the system.
The doctors are there to give expert advice on the medical condition of the client but they are not allowed to make the decision. There are other persons who have the legal delegation to make the decision. There are various review mechanisms that allow the case to be bumped up to higher levels both internally and externally and those reviewers may overturn the decisions of lower levels. This is the way the Act is written, unless the parliament changes it that how the process must be done. No government, to my knowledge, has ever wanted to make such a change.
The delegate must take into account all the factors relevant to entitlement before making their decision, the doctors just give an opinion of the medical side of it. Do not assume that where several doctors are involved they always agree. The rules about the details of how the decision is made change from time to time. So if the rules passed down from on high say the decision in a given case goes against medical opinion then that’s it.
We may ask how that is possible, that doctors can be overruled. The explanation is that the rules do not say things like ‘If you have medical condition xyz then you qualify’ instead they say ‘If you reach xyz level of impairment then you qualify’. So it is an interpretation of medical matters and other considerations that determine impairment. Such rules have been, and probably always will be, politically determined.
The case in point was not one of the worst tear-jerkers but it did invite the public to conclude that somebody had done something wrong. What is right and wrong in the broader sense is a very difficult to decide, we would all have different subjective feelings on how much impairment is required but few if any would have a clue how to describe their desire in a way that can be interpreted daily regarding a huge variety of cases. In the narrower sense making the decision according to the law I see no evidence that the Dept failed but we will never know the details.
It is open to every citizen to have their own view on whether the rules given to the delegates are appropriate but do not underestimate the difficulty of getting consensus or of implementing it.
Mostly the tussle is over a middle ground, bathed in shades of grey with fuzzy edges. The forces in play pull one way or the other as much as they dare. The outcomes are presented in a very matter of fact way. The illusion is of a system that is black or white. It may not be perfect. I’d always hope for something better.
Is it better that we have what we have, than one where there is no middle ground?
There are too many discouraging examples of the latter.
Me too. In a nutshell the citizens are not prepared to pay for any better. As for something much better, it will never happen as whatever is done some sector of the nation will think it wrong.
What is a thorough investigation to one will be excessive invasion of privacy to another. What may be compassion to one is bleeding hearts giving away public money to the next. There are so many contrary pairs that can be applied to the policies everyone can find something not to like in any one.
The issue is so emotive. Which is why it is fodder for cheap quick news stories for generations of journalists.
I applied for DSP because of chronic fatigue. 12 months after I was denied it, my objection was processed and the assessor was judged to have made mistakes in my assessment. then after 9 years on DSP, I was deemed no longer elligible, just because of the change in the method of assessment, not improvement in my condition. Thanks to Covid19, all chronic fatigue sufferers may now receive real help, medically and financially, as the incidence of cases increases and it is accepted as a real affliction.
When recently notified of a need to update my low income health care card, I completed the application on the shiny new app - and got a new Medicare card instead, just 2 months newer than the previous one.
The people I meet there now are invariably kind, helpful, sympathetic. The overarching bureacracry is inflexible and chronically subject to failure of judgement due to a robot-like attitude that is out of kilter with dealing with the enormous variety of people-issues.
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