CHAPTER 4 | a national operation

Introduction

The Commonwealth Ombudsman is one of the few national ombudsman established in a federal system of government. The office covers perhaps the largest geographic area of any ombudsman. This poses challenges in handling complaints about government on a national basis. At the same time, there are benefits to be gained from the national character of the office.

To strengthen our role as a national complaint-handling institution, the Commonwealth Ombudsman maintains eight offices in capital cities throughout Australia. Not all complaint-handling or oversight bodies in Australia have followed that path. Alternatives include maintaining an office in only one or two capital cities or establishing a national call centre. We have not taken those steps, even though we receive most complaints by telephone, mail or email.

This chapter describes our national operation and explains the benefits of maintaining a national presence through our eight offices. An implicit theme is that our structure has been shaped and refined over time. In effect, the experience and wisdom of the office is captured not only in the philosophy and principles of complaint handling that it has developed and follows, but in the office structure and relationships that provide a framework for the complaint-handling function.

This account of our national operation, while explanatory for the most part, touches on a related issue to do with the preferred model for establishing new complaint-handling and oversight mechanisms. Proposals have been made from time to time in public debate for creating specialist ombudsman offices, to handle complaints about matters such as aviation, education, science, children's affairs or freedom of information. Many issues need to be considered in creating a new complaint-handling function, but a threshold issue is whether to house that function in a new and independent office, or instead to confer it upon an existing body (as the Government chose to do in conferring the proposed role of Postal Industry Ombudsman upon the Commonwealth Ombudsman). This chapter aims to contribute to this debate by outlining some of the benefits that a national structure and complaint-handling operation can offer.