The Minister for Human Services, Michael Keenan has asked his Department to develop urgent options for cracking down on aggressive and violent incidents in Centrelink offices following an unsavoury event caught on camera in South Australia last week.
Mr Keenan expressed his disgust at the incident, saying the behaviour was totally unacceptable and was one of thousands of incidents of aggression and violence faced by Centrelink staff each year.
“I was disgusted to see video of somebody abusing my staff and women and children in one of our service centres,” Mr Keenan said.
“Unfortunately, this is one of thousands of incidents of customer aggression that we get around the country in any given year.”
He said the Department would work on options that would further penalise people who were involved in this sort of behaviour.
“It is completely unacceptable for the 35,000 people in my Department to go to work and fear that they might be abused or assaulted in this way,” Mr Keenan said.
He said video of the incident went viral on social media after a customer filmed a man abusing staff and making racist remarks to other customers inside the centre.
Mr Keenan said police were called and spoke to the man and further action has not been ruled out.
The Minister said current measures to deal with abusive clients included banning them from having face-to-face contact with staff and limiting their contact to either phone calls or written correspondence.
Mr Keenan said he did not want to preempt what further measures might look like, but said those who did the wrong thing were on notice that their behaviour would not be tolerated.
