Tom Wade used the Commonwealth government directory to contact senior executives in the Department of Human Service when he couldn’t get through to Centrelink using the official channels. Uni student Tom Wade was one of hundreds of thousands of Australians driven to despair by Centrelink’s customer service performance. But instead of getting mad, Mr Wade got busy, accessing the Australian Government Directory and confronting senior Department of Human Services Bureaucrats directly with his complaints. <\/p>\n
Elevate your problems to higher levels<\/strong><\/p>\n The administrative blunder was soon sorted, Mr Wade says, and he is encouraging frustrated clients to take their grievances up Centrelink’s management, saying departmental bosses should be held accountable for the failings at the coalface.<\/p>\n When Mr Wade’s youth allowance payments were cancelled in late 2014 he did what most clients do and took to Centrelink’s phone lines to solve\u00a0the problem.<\/p>\n But in a story that will be all\u00a0too\u00a0familiar <\/strong>with <\/strong>hundreds <\/strong>of thousands of clients of the welfare agency, seemingly endless periods of waiting on hold resulted in being put through to someone who could not help the Melbourne student.<\/p>\n So, after using search engine Google to figure out who were the power people behind the scenes at Centrelink<\/a>, the 23-year-old stumbled on his most powerful weapon; the Australian Government Directory<\/a>.<\/p>\n