Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This report is a really important topic and a topic that I'm very, very interested in. In fact, it's one of the things that inspired me to stand for parliament. I've got experience in the employment services area, having spent 10 years working across it to see improvements and get outcomes for long-term unemployed Aboriginal people.

I rise to speak on this particular report, Jobactive: failing those it is intended to serve, an important report that's had a look at the employment services system. The employment services system—jobactive, as it's called—is incredibly important. It's a key plank of this government's strategy to assist people to get the skills that they need and the support that they need to address barriers that they might have to employment, so they can get off welfare and, importantly, get into a job. We know how important that is.

This report has had a look at the system, and the government takes a lot of pride in this system. It's improved significantly over the years, but the government does acknowledge that there is further room for improvement. As I said, it was one of the things that inspired me to come into this place. I feel like it's something that I can contribute to now as a legislator—assisting with the further improvement of the system. We must ensure that we're getting better outcomes, and not just for the investment that the taxpayer is putting into the system.

We spend, over the life of the contract, about $7 billion on jobactive. We can, indeed, get better outcomes for the taxpayer in terms of the outcomes we could achieve, but also, importantly, we could get better outcomes for the participants in the jobactive system. One of the points that this report goes to, particularly in the government's response, refers to a review that was commissioned by the employment minister, Minister Cash, to have a look at the jobactive system. Before coming into parliament, I was appointed as an expert witness to sit on the panel that was looking at the employment services system. I was appointed as a participant on that panel to look at the system and to see how it could be improved.

The report goes to some of those key recommendations that were made out of the evaluation of the system. Those recommendations have been put in place in a trial that is now underway in Adelaide and also on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. Ultimately, what this is trialling is a very different way of operating. It's a different way of working with the jobactive system. It's providing a much more flexible opportunity for jobseekers to engage with the system. It's important that we don't just impose upon people or require people, as part of their mutual obligations, to deal with a binary or simple response to their activation. We must ensure that we're requiring people to engage in activities that are going to improve their capacity to get off welfare and, ultimately, into a job. This system that's being trialled is a much more flexible system. It's a points based system of activation. It gives jobseekers flexibility—through various activities, whether it be training, work experience or even searching for a job—to meet their obligations, and that is something worth trialling, and it is being trialled right now in those areas.

There is also a digital aspect of the trial. There are many jobseekers, particularly those who have only recently become unemployed, who have a lot of skills and just need a little bit of support with access to information so that they can self-service, if you like, to get themselves into a job and get the requisite training and support. So this system is being trialled. The government has actually taken this report, but there is a lot of activity in place already. There is a lot that we are already doing to implement the recommendations from this report.