Minister pledges better Centrelink calls

The age of Centrelink hanging up on callers is over, the federal government services minister promises.

In the 11 months to the end of May, more than 26.7 million callers to Centrelink got a busy signal.

In May alone there were 1.1 million unanswered calls.

But Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert says there is now no call blocking on the lines thanks to technology upgrades.

"That is, more than 150,000 calls that were once blocked every single day for the last decade, now down to zero," he told the National Press Club on Tuesday.

He also says the average time callers spend on hold has plummeted to under five minutes.

In April, callers ringing about pensions, Newstart, and other payments all waited more than 21 minutes on average to have their calls answered.

However, average wait times dropped significantly in May for everyone except aged pensioners, according to new department figures obtained by the Greens.

Mr Robert says the agency has had a "baptism by fire" over the first half of 2020.

"It has not been an ordinary 12 months and it has been an extraordinary six months," he said.

"Were there mistakes made? Plenty - but we only made them once and when we failed, we failed very fast and we tried again."

As coronavirus shutdowns plunged the nation into recession and threw hundreds of thousands of people out of jobs, Services Australia dealt with 1.3 million new welfare claims in 55 days - as many as it would normally process in two-and-a-half years.

The myGov and Centrelink portals crashed over the first couple days of the virus-driven shutdowns in March, as more than 100,000 people tried to lodge unemployment claims.

The minister initially blamed a denial of service attack before backtracking.

The sites had been upgraded, but could only handle 55,000 people at once. It can now take 300,000.

Mr Robert conceded on Tuesday not anticipating the level of capacity was one of his mistakes, as was blaming it on a cyber-attack without first investigating.

He also said the government could have switched to having a simple "intent to claim" form for the newly unemployed in place days before it did, to relieve some of the pressure on the systems.

Thousands of people queued at Centrelink offices around the country in scenes many politicians have described as heartbreaking.

Mr Robert says his agency's overhaul of services is focused on making the experience simple, helpful, respectful and transparent.

A revamped, more intuitive myGov portal now being tested will be running by the end of 2021.

At the same time, the government will move towards using facial recognition, matched against drivers licence or passport photos, for people to log in to services.