Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Training and Sport) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased, on behalf of the opposition, that the government has taken up the concerns of employment service providers, peak groups, other stakeholders and the opposition about the lack of early intervention for the newly unemployed under Labor’s employment services model. The opposition have been highlighting the lack of early intervention in the Rudd government’s new employment services since August last year. Shortly after seeing the exposure draft, we identified this problem. In a media release on 7 August last year, the opposition highlighted that under new employment services there would be nothing more than assistance in writing a resume and information on the local labour market for the majority of new job seekers for the first three months of unemployment.

Almost six months ago, in the last ministerial statement on employment services, we demonstrated that only 12.8 per cent of resources for employment services would be provided for stream-1 job seekers, who are the majority of new job seekers. We now know that 61 per cent of new job seekers will be stream 1. We said that reducing the early intervention for employment services was risky, inflexible and showed a lack of foresight. Unfortunately, there are now 80,000 more Australians who are unemployed since August, when we first warned of the problems with Labor’s new employment services. In question time the minister talked about his decisive action, but we all know that the action could have been more decisive. It has taken almost seven months to get to this point.

How did we get here? The Minister for Employment Participation took the job at a time when the unemployment rate was 4.2 per cent and there were 493,600 Australians unemployed. Now unemployment is 4.8 per cent and there are 540,200 Australians out of work. If you look at some of the research done by former senator John Black, you can see that regional unemployment has risen by more than 1½ per cent over the last 12 months in a number of regions across Australia, especially in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay and Rockhampton in Wide Bay and the Gold Coast. As Saul Eslake said, unemployment rising by more than 1½ per cent is indicative of a recession.

In 1998, the previous government introduced the Job Network. It was highly successful. It reduced unemployment from 7.7 per cent in May 1998 to below four per cent in February this year. Not even a year ago, the minister, in a foreword on a discussion paper on the future of employment services in Australia, said:

The Job Network ... is no longer suited to a labour market characterised by lower unemployment, widespread skill shortages and a growing proportion of job seekers who are highly disadvantaged and long-term unemployed.

In a nutshell, the government designed an employment services model for a period of full employment. They made an assumption that people who were job ready would be able to find employment themselves. They were quite proud of putting the resources towards the people who would find it hardest to have a job and of addressing issues like creaming and parking. They were responding to the job market of 18 months ago. The problem is: we have an employment services system which is delivered by a mix of private sector and not-for-profit providers. That means that it is absolutely critical that the government get the balance right in the investment in job seekers and in the incentives for employment services providers. So, Minister, you came up with the wrong model at the worst possible time. It has been very obvious to employment service providers, to the opposition and to everyone except the minister—until now—that this model would not work in a climate of rising unemployment and weak or negative jobs growth.

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