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Under questioning from the Greens senator, Janet Rice, the Services Australia chief executive, Rebecca Skinner, said the call times were “less than ... optimal”. Skinner said the agency was currently 500 staff below the average staffing level within the customer service delivery. She said the agency was facing similar labour shortages to “other large businesses” and it had been a challenge to maintain its workforce. M4 We currently find ourselves in our service delivery space several hundred people short of where we could be...We have had larger demand partially coming out of changed economic circumstances. Rice said the call wait figures showed a “huge increase”. Don Farrell, representing government services minister Bill Shorten at estimates, said the waiting times were an “unfortunate reality of the former government’s carving out of staff numbers” at Services Australia. The agency is currently embarking on an recruitment drive.