Dealing with complaints about government

The Covid-19 lockdowns fell like a hammer blow on small businesses.

To the Victorian Government's credit, it swiftly announced an economic survival package to provide 10,000 grants to eligible small business owners.

The fund was established and scaled at speed but soon after my office was inundated with complaints. I received more than 1,100 complaints about the fund. There was desperation in people's voices. They were counting on the grant to pay bills, rent, wages to survive.

Joanne: 'The problem was this letter that I'd received with the link, that I hadn't used it and that's why they thought that I'd put in two applications which I hadn't and so they were difficulties that you know you knew you had to have the information right, but to find your way through the computer system in order to do it was horrific.'

Andrew: 'At first it was pretty difficult to wade through the internet and look at all the forms and work out whether you were eligible or not and in our case a spelling mistake in an email address meant that it went all wrong.'

Good intentions got lost in translation. Business owners were denied the grant because their applications remained in draft awaiting further information when the deadline expired, there were typos on their application, they provided information through the wrong link and there were delays. The department had nine days to implement the program but it missed some of the key checks and balances that would have picked up the inevitable flaws. Many complaints could have been resolved without coming to my office, had the department been more reasonable at the time.

Leanne: 'Well I'm a small business person and I'm a single income earner and that ten thousand dollars would have helped me immensely so we had to sort of do some research on it and finally I got the form filled, it out in May, I received an email a few weeks later saying that they couldn't read the attachments that they asked for and rang and got nowhere so I was getting nowhere and I said "can't you take my number?" and "no it's just shut down and it's too late" is what I got.'

To the department's credit, it engaged constructively with my office from the outset, resolving many complaints and improving their processes along the way. Many people received their grants while the investigation was ongoing and now, as a result of my investigation, about twelve thousand business owners may be able to reapply to the fund - that's potentially over one hundred million dollars going back into the small business community.

Sometimes it takes the nudge of the Ombudsman's elbow to encourage public servants to do the right thing. In the end that they do the right thing is what matters.