Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for his question and take the latter parts of his questions first. The rollout will happen nationally around the country from 1 July. Quite clearly, it will ramp up aggressively in each area, but there will be a national rollout starting in all areas on 1 July. With regard to wage subsidies we have introduced a range of measures to make those wage subsidies more flexible and more appealing to employers. Previously, the subsidies tended to be back-ended and wage subsidies were not paid until later in the employment period. After some very careful consultation with a range of stakeholders it was felt that the more flexible we could make wage subsidies the more appealing that would be for employers.

Take the Restart program, for example, which focuses on people over the age of 50. Restart was, under the previous budget, payable over 24 months, and we have now made that Restart program payable over 12 months. That is a welcome improvement. We are allowing flexibility for employment service providers to negotiate with various employers to come up with a payment structure that is mindful of the importance of ensuring that government revenue is spent wisely but in a way that meets the needs of employers. For example, under the new arrangements the wage subsidies can be paid fortnightly if the employer would like that. The youth wage subsidy was previously paid when a young person had been unemployed for a period of 12 months; it is now payable when a young person has been unemployed for six months, with a view to assisting a young person into work before they get to the point of becoming long-term unemployed. With all of our wage subsidies, as with Restart, there is a degree of flexibility to meet the needs of the employer. The more flexible we can make these wage subsidies, the more effectively they will be taken up.

Another thing we have done is combine all the wage subsidies into a $1.2 billion wage subsidy pool. If the take-up in wage subsidy A is not up to expectations but the take-up in wage subsidy B is heading towards over-expectations, the money can flow—it will be a global budget, basically. Money can go where the demand is. That is another important element in ensuring that we get the maximum utilisation of the wage subsidies.

With regard to the other elements of the question, we are putting more money on the table for employment services than Labor ever did. That is an important point—this is a massive investment. It is a $6.8 billion investment in Job Active; there is a Youth Employment Strategy of $330 million. These are massive commitments by this government to ensure that we get as many people as possible off welfare and into work. We are making our wage subsidies more flexible so that we are getting greater take-up by employers, and that is really important. We are building pathways in the system such as I mentioned earlier, where a person can follow a path through Work for the Dole, through work experience and ultimately into a subsidised position. These are great new initiatives that are going to mean that programs are more effective.

One of the really important things we are doing is strongly focusing on payment for results. We are no longer paying for process; we are no longer paying for training for training's sake; we are no longer paying for, in many cases, training outcomes. We are overwhelmingly paying for getting people into work. The outcome we pay for is getting someone into a job. Employment service providers will get a modest retainer or a modest administration fee to cover the costs of individual people on their case load, but if employment service providers are going to succeed under the Job Active system then they are going to need to build strong relationships with employers so that they will have a supply of jobs that they can put their job seekers into. If they do not have strong relationships with employers they are not going to get the number of successful placements that are required to ensure that a particular organisation will succeed under this new system. We are about a strong, results-focused system. We have stripped down red tape, and we want a more effective system for job seekers and employers.

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