Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to talk about the government's 'dobseeker' hotline. There is no limit to the ways in which this government do their very best to make the lives of people on income support a nightmare, from robodebt to mutual obligations. We now have 'dobseeker', a hotline for employers and job providers to dob in a person who, according to them and a lot of anecdotal evidence, refused to take a job they'd been offered. Not only is this an abuse of power that will hurt the most vulnerable; there is no evidence to support the anecdotal claims of so-called job snobs and people refusing to take work.

The employment service system is rife with bullying, harassment and people being ignored or treated very poorly by their job service providers. But, instead of dealing with that, the government has empowered employers and job providers with the means to intimidate and bully jobseekers. There are currently 245,400 jobs available, with 1.14 million people looking for work. Anybody can do the maths on that. The problem is not the so-called job snobs; it's actually the lack of available work. Minister Robert is so keen to demonise and humiliate jobseekers that a couple of weeks ago, just after estimates, when we were asking about the 'dobseeker' line, he proudly announced that there were hundreds of people who have been dobbed into this twisted hotline. Remember that someone making a phone call to the 'dobseeker' line does not mean that the jobseeker is guilty. When you have 1.14 million people looking for work, a couple of hundred phone calls is nothing other than an attempt by the government, once again, to demonise jobseekers. There was absolutely no need for him to make the outrageous claims that he did.

So many in this place have a lot to say about those on low incomes and how we need to be inflicting mutual obligations on them, but not a lot is said about the dodgy job providers and exploitative employers. I'm not for one minute saying they all are, but there are a lot of dodgy service providers. We hear crickets from the government on the employment programs and providers who were paid a lot of money to find these jobs that in fact don't exist when we have 1.14 people million on JobSeeker and youth allowance but only 245,400 jobs available.

Of course, businesses are going to be getting swamped with applications. There are 1.14 million people looking for work who have to submit 15 job applications per month. That adds up to millions and millions—over 15 million—of job applications per month. That's going up to 20 million in July. So you can imagine that people are desperate to find work and desperate to get applications in and so employers are dealing with a lot of job applications. This paper pushing for the sake of it only serves to depress and stress out jobseekers. It is completely unmanageable for employers and a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy for the public sector, businesses and small-business owners.

It's because of the government's ridiculous mutual obligations that businesses are having to deal with this many applications, and, of course, it's ridiculous for people on income support. The employment service system is not fit for purpose, with a major problem being the fact that job service providers have to do the compliance on these mutual obligations. They are the ones that have to enforce compliance rather than assisting people into fulfilling employment pathways. The complaints process for the jobactive system is so poor and opaque that the only way most people can get an outcome if they have a bad experience with providers is to go to their local members of parliament or local senators. But employers and job service providers can just call a hotline to get some help and make a complaint. Try being a jobseeker who wants to complain about their employment service provider and the lack of support they are getting and—oh, no—there is very little response. The government can spend millions of dollars pursuing the illegal robodebt scheme with next to no consequences. (Time expired)