MELTDOWN AS WE SEEK HELP

AUSTRALIANS seeking Centrelink payments are being urged to stay away from service centres amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Scores of people flooded Geelong’s service centres yesterday as hundreds of business owners and employees affected by the coronavirus attempted to claim benefits for the first time.

Both the MyGov platform and the Centrelink app stopped allowing hundreds of people to log in shortly before 9am, according to web status site DownDetector, although some users said the system had been working only intermittently since Friday.

Geelong Advertiser reporters saw dozens of people queuing outside the Centrelink offices at Corio Village and Geelong. A Corio woman, who declined to be named, said she waited in line for more than an hour before giving up.

Customer Jason Sheahan, who said he was out of work due to coronavirus uncertainty, said he also faced lengthy delays.

“Once I got in they were very helpful,” Mr Sheahan said. “Centrelink was OK and (have) done everything they asked, only problem is (I) have to wait two to three weeks (for payments) and I am experiencing financial difficulties at the moment.”

Users who attempted to contact Centrelink by phone reported long waits, hangups and recorded messages asking them to phone back at a later time.

Government Services Minister Stuart Robert said Centrelink had experienced a 10-fold increase in inquiries and requests but initially rejected suggestions the services had “crashed”, instead blaming a “significant distributed denial-of-service attack” for its unavailability.

“The site didn’t crash,” Mr Robert said. “We suffer cyber attacks more often than I think people quite realise.”

But Mr Robert later told parliament there was “no evidence of a specific attack” but that MyGov had logged requests from 95,000 users when it could only support 55,000 users.

A statement from online Services Australia, which operates Centrelink, urged people not to visit service centres unless there is a “critical need” to be there.

“If you’re already getting a payment that is eligible for the economic support payment or the coronavirus supplement, you do not need to do anything, you’ll get paid automatically,” the statement read. “Please do not call or visit us.”

People who don’t get income support and need help because they lost their job or have had their income reduced must start a claim online.

“If you need to provide