The four stages produced sustained change and the implementation of a new type of agency of significance in Australia and internationally. There remained challenges and issues in the mid-2000s: cost transparency for clients and for Centrelink management so that channel-management decisions were soundly based; spreading better practice within the organisation; enhancing IT systems and flexibility; improving relations with client departments; increasing feedback into the policy processes; improving staff technical and interpersonal skills; streamlining reliable processes that linked with business or community organisations; reducing call centre waiting times; reducing errors and improving compliance; further implementation of personalisation of services; improving and extending Internet transactions; and reconsidering the purchaser–provider funding model. There were also the questions about contending with Centrelink’s media image and gaining the confidence of the wider community.

Whether Centrelink could call itself a one-stop shop or just a first-stop shop remained open to debate. It did refer its customers to other agencies and organisations—Job Network providers and community organisations—but it also tended to be the first point of contact. The government had created other agencies to deliver specific services that might have been expected to have been given to Centrelink, but it increasingly aimed to provide an integrated, whole-of-government approach to service delivery.

There was a change of role and language from being a one-stop shop to being a broker of services. The AWT initiative placed Centrelink in a new central role working with all those who could assist its customers to improve their integration and participation in the community: community organisations, businesses and educational institutions. It could not work alone, it could not be a one-stop shop but it could provide the bridge that helped customers participate in society.

Centrelink’s unusual and perhaps unique public administration model is made up of several elements that are not necessarily original, but when bundled together in one organisation they have produced something new and worth understanding. These aspects are analysed in the remaining chapters of this book.