The government has claimed cabinet confidentiality over a report that it says shows contractors answer more Centrelink calls than public servants, thwarting a Greens plan to make the document public.
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The Senate had agreed to a Greens motion to compel the government to table the report from consultants KPMG, but it is set to remain secret.
The Greens, Labor and the main public sector union have lined up to criticise the government over the move but Human Services Minister Michael Keenan said cabinet processes must be maintained. He also disputed claims that contractors were not delivering quality call centre services for Centrelink clients.
Around 2750 contractors will soon be answering Centrelink calls around the country, under contracts with four private labour hire companies. The extra numbers will assist with the government's efforts to drive down waiting times for Centrelink callers and reduce the number of calls that meet a busy signal.
The push to more privately-employed call centre workers came after a trial with 250 people employed by Serco. The KPMG report on the trial was used in cabinet deliberations around extending the program, the government said.
At the opening of one of the new call centres in Brisbane, Minister Keenan said Australians were less worried about who answers their call, as long as it is done quickly and their problem is resolved.
The KPMG report showed the contractors answered more calls, had less time between calls, were cost-effective and ranked equally for customer satisfaction, but the full results won't be known.
"This is an issue of huge public interest," Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said in the Senate on Monday night.
"These sorts of documents should not be cabinet-in-confidence documents. They should be publicly available.
It's public money that's being spent on a service that is absolutely critical to some of the most vulnerable members of our community, who are getting poor service because of lack of enough staff and lack of training for the staff," the party's spokeswoman on community services said.
Labor's Human Services spokesman Ed Husic echoed the sentiment, saying the minister should have "the guts" to release the report.
"For the government to say its own Centrelink staff were less efficient than labour-hire workers, to brief the media on further details of the report and then not release it on the basis of 'public interest immunity' is cowardly and cruel," Mr Husic said.
Labor has pledged to employ 1200 more public servants to answer calls if it wins next year's election, and Mr Husic said the comments about the report were a slap in the face for government employees.
"I've heard terrible reports of Centrelink employees being abused by callers, demanding to be referred to contractors - all because of the minister's comments," he said.
The main public sector union is backing Labor's policy to move call centre jobs back to the public service.
"Human Services Minister Michael Keenan has heavily spruiked this report in the media, but tellingly he’s only released a few tiny segments that don’t contradict his sales pitch for selling off Centrelink services," Community and Public Sector Union deputy secretary Melissa Donnelly said.
"It seems the bits of the report the government likes are public but the bits it doesn’t must remain locked away."
