The Senate has passed a motion calling on the government to urgently address telephone waiting times for Centrelink customers, after complaints skyrocketed by nearly 19% in one year.

The number of complaints against Centrelink jumped by 18.8% from the 2013-14 financial year to 2014-15. More than 11,500 complaints were made about telephone wait times or calls not being able to get through in the 2014-15 financial year alone.



Labor and the Greens on Wednesday joined forces to pass the motion calling for the government to “address Centrelink’s service delivery failures including telephone wait times, and provide appropriate support to the millions of Australians who rely on Centrelink and the Department of Human Services”.

The Greens senator Rachel Siewert, who co-sponsored the motion, said the number of complaints had increased due to cuts to Centrelink which resulted in fewer options for face-to-face services.

“More and more people are being pushed to phone and online services, as resources have been been cut from Centrelink,” Siewert told Guardian Australia.

She said users of Centrelink were becoming worried about tough talk by the government on compliance issues, leading to increased demand on support services.

The general manager of the Department of Human Services, Hank Jongen, backed his staff, saying the number of complaints was “relatively small” compared with how many people rely on the agency.

“The department does an extremely difficult job very well, handling more than 600,000 customer interactions per day, half of those through digital channels,” Jongen told Guardian Australia in a statement. “It is also not surprising with the significant growth in use of digital services that there has been a growth in complaints from customers about this issue.”

Jongen said improving the department’s payment infrastructure system was a “high priority” for the government.

“We are taking action now to reduce call wait times by improving our self-service options and replacing our ageing telephony system with a more sophisticated platform for Centrelink phone lines, which will allow us to better manage and respond to customer calls,” he said. “The department’s information and communications technology infrastructure is also outdated and extremely complex, making service delivery difficult, and somewhat inefficient.”

Siewert called for people to share their experiences with Centrelink with her through social media. Within a few days, she had more than 400 examples, many of which were read out during a speech in the Senate on Tuesday night.

Examples included one from Jaclyn, who said she contacted Centrelink after it cancelled her payments. After waiting on the phone for two hours, she was told her payments were cancelled because she did not respond to a letter. It turns out the letter was sent to the wrong address.

Another respondent, Amanda, said she was told it would take seven weeks before she was eligible for the disability support pension. After six months, she was still waiting.

“It is understandable that people are frustrated ... These are the terrible experiences we are hearing, of suffering and frustration,” she said. “I will be following up in estimates, because there are literally dozens of issues that come up and that need to be explained, that people need an answer for.”

On Wednesday, the Senate debated legislation that would increase the compliance responsibilities of jobseekers applying for dole payments.

The bill would suspend payments to recipients of unemployment benefits who undertook inadequate job searches, or who passed up suitable jobs.

Neither the Greens nor Labor support the legislation in its current form, though Labor is confident the government would support three amendments it has put forward.