By JAMAL HADDOU,
education editor
Massive delays in the processing of Youth Allowance applications have left many students across Australia in financial hardship.
To highlight the impact of the issue federal Labor MP Julie Collins set up a Facebook page where students publicly shared their stories of being left without payment for months.
The Department of Human Services’ key performance indicator is to process Youth Allowance and AusStudy claims within 21 days. This time frame has doubled, with many claims taking up to six weeks to process, according to Ms Collins.
The MP said she was disturbed by the number of students who were facing financial hardship as a result of major delays.
“The response I received from hundreds of students doing it tough, while not surprising, was incredibly concerning,” Ms Collins said.
“Young people are struggling to pay for food and rent, and some are being forced to drop out of school and training courses due to long delays in Youth Allowance and AusStudy payments.”
Ms Collins has blamed the Turnbull Government for the “service delivery disaster” and she said Centrelink staff and IT systems could not keep up with the number of applications.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman’s latest report (2014-15) revealed complaints against Centrelink had increased by 36 per cent in one year. Call wait times to Centrelink also made a sharp increase averaging 14.5 minutes.
Centrelink blocked more than 22 million phone calls last year, equating to 60,000 unanswered calls every day. Centrelink officials, however, claimed a part of this surge in phone calls came from smart phone apps.
The standard university semester began in February and some students have gone nine weeks without any income. As exams approach, there are fears some students will not be able to cope with their studies.
The usual payment for Youth Allowance is $285 a fortnight. This could mean up to $2565 of unpaid Youth Allowance for a student waiting since the start of the semester.
Some university students are relying on food banks while others have accumulated hundreds of dollars in debt as they struggle to pay rent.
Jasmin Nellis-Carter is one of more than 100 students who shared her experience of financial troubles on the forum.
“I left my workplace of five years in February to begin full-time study in the course of my dreams. I applied early January for my Youth Allowance claim after a lot of struggling with their online system and was rejected four days before the start of my course,” she said.
“I feel incredibly discouraged by the lack of support and am only hanging on because I love the career path I have chosen. Why encourage young people to study to get better jobs only to not offer and incentive?”
Canberra Institute of Technology student Sarah Maree posted a similar experience.
“Why can't they make this easy for those who are studying and wanting to achieve more? Waiting up to four months for payments is not ideal and they need to get this fixed, students are suffering,” she said.
Centrelink has since increased the number of staff to process student claims. However, Ms Collins said these have measures arrived too late.
“The Government and the minister have now finally accepted there is a delay and have put on additional casual staff to process the claims,” she said.
“The minister is saying the backlog should be cleared within two weeks – I don’t think this will occur but I sincerely hope so.”