Staff from Services Australia's Bendigo office have told Government Services Minister Bill Shorten of their experiences helping people during Australia's most recent disasters.
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Mr Shorten visited Bendigo on Friday to thank staff for their efforts during the coronavirus pandemic.
He spoke with staff members Susan Barber and Trish Driscoll who were on the frontline from the beginning of the pandemic.
"Services Australia is an important employer in Bendigo, which delivers 230-plus jobs and provides opportunities for local residents to have meaningful work and help deliver something back to the country and the region," he said.
"Services Australia and Bendigo has supported the Bendigo community and well beyond over COVID and during the recent spate of natural disasters."
Ms Barber started work with Services Australia in March, 2020, as the state went into its first lockdown.
"We processed thousands of job seeker claims, health care card and low income health care card claims," she said.
"At that time that was the difference between people being able to afford to feed their families, being able to afford to pay their bills and pay their mortgages. We were able to support them through that.
"Every day was a busy day. Literally thousands of claims got done during those first few months. Even now we're still still working through claims to try and assist people.
"We all felt like we were doing our bit to try and get people through what was pretty tough time and still is."
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Ms Driscoll recently spent five weeks in the flood-affected areas of Queensland and NSW where people had been devastated by the natural disaster.
"We were delivering the disaster recovery payment $1000 for the adults and $400 for the children," she said. "Everyone had their own story to tell. So we would just listen. It was really hard.
"Some people have got nowhere to live. That's the hardest part. I came back to a house and some didn't have a house to go back to.
"Some people were devastated, so it was a pleasure to help them. They were just from all parts of the community."
Bendigo MP Lisa Chesters said Bendigo's Services Australia office had worked through the entire pandemic and all of Victoria's lockdowns.
"When everything got shut down, there was one place that was super busy where people were coming in and processing disaster payments to make sure that people weren't hungry," she said. "That was the staff here at Services Australia.
"It's rare to find someone who hasn't had an interaction with Services Australia in the last decade or into the future. I think that we can learn a lot from our frontline team on how we can do it better."
Mr Shorten said the federal government was committed to bringing outsourced jobs, such as customer services and call centres, back to the public sector.
"These are trained Commonwealth public servants who are veterans and experienced and understanding the system," he said.
"Even more importantly, they are trained to deal with people who - for whatever set of circumstances and life - has led them to walk through the office doors or to go online and find help.
"So I think there is value in a well funded well invested well resourced Australian Public Service."
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