Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Thursday I visited the electorate of Lalor at the invitation of my colleague Joanne Ryan, who has become increasingly concerned by the impact of the Turnbull government's failing job programs on the people she represents and cares about. I heard firsthand the experiences of jobseekers—the often fruitless efforts they put in to navigating these programs. We heard from people who are long-term unemployed, underemployed and everything in between. We heard from mums trying to get back into the workforce after raising their kids, experiencing job knockback after job knockback. We heard from older workers who were told not to bother applying for jobs. We heard from young university-qualified and disabled jobseekers unable to get job interviews. We heard concern after concern about a system not providing tailored support when it's supposed to do just that. We heard from people feeling like they're forced into a routine job search for the sake of meeting a provider's KPI and made to feel worthless because they don't have a job.

Looking for work has become hard work in itself. The reality is these people are being let down by a failing system and a weakened labour market. Instead of our nation's employment minister obsessing about ideological campaigns and union bashing day in and out, maybe she could actually meet these jobseekers face-to-face for a change and then apply the same energy to fixing her failing job programs. I want to not only thank the people of Lalor who were so open with us but tell them that we will push for better. They deserve better. We want to get them into work. We know they want to be employed.