Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There was one document that was left off the Notice Paper earlier this week, which was the government response to the Senate Education and Employment References Committee report—Jobactive: failing those it is intended to serve. I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

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

I wish to take note of the document that Senator Urquhart re-established back on the Notice Paper, which is the government response to Jobactive: failing those who it is intending to servereport. This was a very important Senate inquiry, and we heard from particularly people that are participants in jobactive from service providers in terms of their experiences, and broadly members of the community.

I think that the committee raised a number of points and I think made a number of important recommendations. I will also note that the Greens submitted additional comments because we thought that the report should go further. We were disappointed with the government's response because this was an important inquiry. It raised a whole number of points. The response fails to acknowledge the significant evidence that we heard and, in particular, does not properly address the recommendations. It also denies that Jobactive is not fit for purpose. And, in fact, it is not fit for purpose and even more so during this pandemic and also coming out and during the recovery period, it is just not going to meet the needs of people who are looking for work.

The response doesn't acknowledge the problems and hurt caused by mutual obligations and the targeted compliance framework. For example, the committee recommended that the government look at transferring responsibility for compliance which at the moment is with the employment consultants, with the Jobactive providers. We recommended that that be transferred to the public service. This is an absolutely essential point because at the moment the requirement to fulfil the government's compliance work is actually eroding the trust between participants, jobseekers and the employment consultants.

I'm deeply alarmed that the government is planning to continue the mutual obligations and the targeted compliance framework as part of the new employment services model. Compliance does not lead to better outcomes for jobseekers and, in fact, the TCF is counterproductive and has a negative impact on jobseekers, in particular their mental health and wellbeing. It further entrenches disadvantage and poverty and in fact is leading to people dropping out of the system altogether.

I'm really worried that the new employment services model will not address these issues with job service providers, and let me tell you there have been a lot of problems with job service providers and my office has heard extensively about these problems. Despite mutual obligations being suspended, my office has been inundated with calls and messages during lockdown from people being harassed by job service providers. I've heard countless accounts of job service providers forcing people to sign job plans—the same old rubberstamp job plans that don't meet their needs, that are not individually focused. They've been told to undertake face-to-face appointments, for crying out loud, during lockdown and threatening to cut off people's income support payments—during the pandemic this has been happening; job service providers are doing this.

Here are some of the personal accounts we've heard from people struggling with their job service providers.

My DES—

the disability employment service—

has rung me every fortnight for a phone appointment. I have also had them texting me asking me to email my resume through even though they have one on file. I often get called two or three times a week asking me have I applied for jobs that they see. I'm a single parent with an autoimmune disease and I'm also immune suppressed.

Another mum newly on jobseeker was referred to and contacted by her JSP, who had her sign a new job search plan and release of information over an email. She was then phoned a fortnight later to see how her job search was going, even though mutual obligations were suspended. She also received another letter for a phone interview on the day she sent me this correspondence. She was asked whether she had found work. All of this contact has been during the suspension of mutual obligations. 'My mum is really confused by all this.'

'My job service provider here in Murray Bridge rang and told me that I had to do a four-day online course at home and, if I don't, I'll be forced to do it when mutual obligations are running again or face a 16-week penalty payment suspension.' That's just not true. 'I am a single parent with a child on an altered education program that begins at 10.30 each day.'

As you can hear from these—and I have got a lot more accounts of people's experiences—jobactive is not fit for purpose. It needs to be fixed, mutual obligations need to continue to be suspended and we need a new way of supporting people.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also take note of the government's appalling response to the report by the Senate Education and Employment References Committee entitled Jobactive: failing those it is intended to serve. It was a very comprehensive report detailing myriad problems in the government's job services framework. We got this very flimsy reply. The report had 41 recommendations. How did the government respond to them? It said under the heading 'Recommendations 1 to 41': 'Job seekers in jobactive report they are satisfied with the quality of services.' It's a pretty arbitrary quoting of statistics. For stream A jobseekers it is but 58.7 per cent of jobseekers who say they are satisfied. That's not 'extremely satisfied' or 'you're terrific'; that's just a basic level of satisfaction.

As Senator Siewert highlighted, the kinds of complaints that dog this system go to the very core of people's lives and their wellbeing. The jobseekers I speak to overwhelmingly tell me that they are not satisfied with the quality of services. ACOSS conducted a survey and found 73 per cent of jobactive participants were dissatisfied and only eight per cent were satisfied.

These are the kinds of things jobseekers say. In cases where they've acted in good faith, trying to engage with the provider they are allocated to by Centrelink, they have been ignored and not given any help finding work. Often that's because, as one example says, providers say to them: 'We don't get any money if we place you now. We'll wait another three months until you've been out of the workforce a bit longer and then we'll help you. Our contract is structured in such a way that we'll get a payment for placing you.'

In cases where appointments have been made with agency staff, there have been occasions when no-one has actually been there. The provider made the appointment and the jobseeker, who was obliged to go, went to their appointment and found that the office was closed.

People have told me that they were offered gift cards as an inducement to produce pay slips to their provider when they had gotten a new job and they had gotten that job off their own back. The provider who wanted to take credit and claim a payment for that job induced that person by giving them a gift certificate. They also tell me that their providers hold their jobseeker payment over them—as an overt threat—to get them to sign job plans or undertake unsuitable activity. So I do not accept the government's argument that jobseekers are simply satisfied with the employment services offering.

I think it is true that the service providers bear the brunt of having to implement this government's policies and so their behaviour is contingent on the policy settings put in place by this government. You have your hands on the policy levers. You've created a system where providers' primary focus seems to be administering the targeted compliance framework, ensuring mutual obligation at the expense of providing jobseekers with meaningful assistance to get them back into the workforce.

The government should be admitting right now that that system, as flawed as it was before, is even more flawed now. In a declining employment market what is the point of spending money to get people to comply to look for a job, particularly when you want to revert back to giving them a measly $40 a day in jobseeker payments. It is simply not going to work. We need employment services to be there to reinvigorate local economies and to be engaged with local employers. It should not be the primary remit of the employment service providers to enforce mutual obligation when it comes at the expense of finding jobseekers meaningful work. Now more than ever jobseekers in this country need an employment services system that actually works. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.