Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

As many of us in this place know, employment is a big issue for older Australians. A big cause for concern, in particular, is holding on to work and being able to get work again if they should find themselves in the unfortunate position of losing their job. People aged 55 years and over make up 25 per cent of the population but only 16 per cent of the workforce. Some of the stats show that you might get 74 per cent of Australians aged 55 to 59 in the labour force, but, by the time they reach the 60- to 64-year-old cohort, that drops to 56½ per cent, and only 12 per cent of those aged 65 and above are still in the labour force. So workforce participation is a big issue.

Also, people are finding, as they get older, that the amount of time taken to find work again is extraordinary. On the stats, we're led to believe that, in some cases, it takes up to 73 weeks for a person in an older age bracket to find work again. And part of the problem is that a lot of older workers believe they're being actively discriminated against on the basis of their age. This has been backed up by survey findings that have been released previously by the Australian Human Rights Commission. Some of the survey work indicated that 27 per cent of people over the age of 50 had recently experienced discrimination in the workplace, and one-third of the recent episodes of discrimination apparently occurred when applying for a job. So it's a big issue.

Last year, the federal government announced in their 2017-18 budget that they would put in place a career transition assistance program. We were told there'd be some trials undertaken. We were told at the time that the program itself would commence in 2020. Part of that program was to do things that you would imagine jobactive should be doing right now—assess the skills and capabilities of older workers, see what can be done to address any training or skills gaps and help with preparation of resumes or job interview skills. This is the stuff that should happen right now, but, apparently, a new scheme had to be put in place to deal with that. In this year's budget, we find out the funding has been brought forward. The trial sites that have been selected will be overrun by the program actually beginning before the trials even end. The two-year trial has been reduced to a one-year trial commencing in 2018 in five regions chosen by the minister, who will not disclose how they came to this decision. We don't know if they're targeting particular Liberal seats or if they're targeting unemployment. Who knows? We don't have the info. Each trial site had a two-year contract to run the trial. That has now been reduced. The department and government haven't worked out how to manage the fact they're cutting the trial time in half. The department made a two-year contract with these businesses but doesn't have a plan to manage this. And the government says this is good for business.

In addition, just three months into the reduced one-year trial, the government will then begin the procurement process for the national rollout, just a quarter of the way through an already reduced trial. How can the national rollout possibly be based on the findings of the trial when the trial has barely got off the ground? The answer is that it will not be. This is just another prop for another media release and another let-down for those who are in need of support. The program was brought forward from 2020 to 2019 because consultation told the government that there was a sense the program was needed now. What a surprise! Older people are wanting help to find jobs already, and we find out that the government has discovered it's needed now. It's an indicator of how out of touch the government is that it didn't realise older jobseekers have a unique challenge when searching for work. But it seems the government did realise older Australians needed help when looking for work, and they saw an opportunity for yet another hollow announcement dressed up as options for older Australians. Let's look at those options.

There is $19.3 million for a skills and training incentive, relying heavily on a skills checkpoint managed by another department. There has been no formal negotiation on how they'll work with the Department of Jobs and Innovation. The government doesn't know how the program will be measured. When asked how it would measure the successful uptake of future employment, the answer was, 'This will be a difficult measure.' If the government's programs for older jobseekers aren't measured on getting them jobs, what's going on? There's a $15.2 million Job Change initiative, another program with no success measures developed and no review set. The $17.7 million entrepreneurship facilitators program has been expanded without an evaluation as to whether it was a success. It is a program where there is no set number of places and again no success measures. The collaborative partnership initiative is another program with no set number of places and no success measures. The program has no review process established to evaluate whether it's actually helped the older Australians it promised to assist. There is the Regional Employment Trials Program, costing $18.4 million, set to be rolled out over 10 'disadvantaged regions', a phrase the government is not able to define when asked for a definition. It is another program that has been announced, but it is not clear where in Australia it will be targeted and it has no success measures and no set evaluation point.

The point is that the government is telling older Australians that it understands what they're facing in the job market and that it will help them. But the truth is that assigning millions of dollars to program titles without even understanding what success will look like isn't going to help those in need. Would the minister agree that, in the world of business, with which we are told he is very familiar, knowing which side of the ledger success sits on would be important and not knowing it would be ruinous? How can he justify that the government is willing to put so many millions of dollars into programs desperately needed by older Australians without having a measure of success? Why, when there are so many failing jobs programs already on the government's books, would they again promise so much and plan so little when it comes to older jobseekers? When is the government going to provide detail of the programs, like what we can actually expect to see, or is it that the government are afraid to put out more figures when the ones they have set out to date have been so completely underachieved?

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