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

I rise tonight to talk about our continued failure relating to mutual obligation and the program of support. I was very disappointed to see the government reintroduce mutual obligations at the beginning of August. A time of heightened uncertainty and continued lockdowns is an ideal time to take a new approach and to kick the habit of the punitive approach to our social security system. The reintroduction of mutual obligations means that people who don't accept or start a 'suitable' job will have their income support payments cancelled or suspended. According to the department's website, suitable work includes any kind of work that the person is capable of doing. It doesn't include work that someone actually wants to do or is qualified to do.

Since August, unemployed workers have been required to participate in at least one appointment with their provider, agree to a job plan, undertake four job searches a month and participate in activities. However, your payment won't be suspended or cancelled if you don't undertake these mutual obligations. Rolling into the future, you will start being penalised for not doing those things. I've also had a lot of people telling me that they've just been forced to sign a job plan that, once again, isn't tailored to their needs. While Victorians couldn't be financially penalised for failing to accept suitable work, they have still been expected to undertake mutual obligations throughout stage 4 lockdowns. So, on top of receiving cuts to their JobSeeker payments in September, 420,000 Melburnians are also expected to juggle mutual obligations during lockdowns and curfews.

It is clear to me that the government plans to fully reintroduce the targeted compliance framework over coming months. This is the least effective and most punitive part of our employment services system. With the jobactive case load more than doubling since COVID started to 1.4 million people, more people than ever before are now experiencing the predatory behaviour of some employment service providers. Every week my office hears from people who have been experiencing the aggressive, predatory and dishonest behaviour of providers. Here are just some of the complaints I've heard recently: multiple people are being chased down for payslips, even if they have found their job without the assistance of an employment service provider, just so the provider can claim their outcome bonus; young people are being forced to undertake unpaid trials for weeks on end and told insurance isn't covered by their employer; providers are asking people to go to face-to-face job appointments during Melbourne's stage 4 lockdown; and people are being asked repeatedly to sign job plans that they haven't seen before, that they don't agree to and that aren't tailored for their needs.

The department of employment has told us that they received only three complaints about allegations of aggressive or predatory behaviour by provider staff between March and July. This is completely out of step with what I'm hearing on a weekly and daily basis. I would strongly encourage anyone having an issue with their provider to lodge an official complaint through the national consumer service line. It's time the government knew exactly what providers are up to and how badly they are treating people.

The privatisation of employment service providers in the late nineties has meant that the provision of unemployment services has been increasingly muddied by the profit margin. It has become clear that this system is flawed and not fit for purpose, particularly during this pandemic and recession. The government has been forced to increase payments to providers and provide additional flexibility in how these payments are used. It is estimated that an additional $500 million has been provided to job agencies during COVID-19. This is because the jobactive system, which is geared towards achieving outcomes, simply can't operate properly during a recession when jobs are so hard to find. As Rick Morton explained in The Saturday Paper this weekend:

Ideologically, at least, the federal government cannot afford for the privatised network of employment service providers operating under Jobactive to fall over—especially with the return of mutual obligations, a process that has already begun in stages.

I think that the pandemic and the recession should make the government change their tack. It's an ideal opportunity to look at changing the way we do business when we provide employment services. We should be moving from a compliance and punitive based approach, which assumes that people aren't going to do the right thing, to a tailored, individualised support system—a much more supportive program where people don't feel demonised and where people aren't punished under the targeted compliance framework for mistakes that in fact have been made by others and not by themselves, as is evidenced in many cases.

Another part of the employment services system that is not working is the program of support. This is a program delivered by employment service providers for people who don't score 20 points or more in one of the impairment tables when they apply for the disability support pension. You need to have actively participated in a program of support for at least 18 out of 36 months before you apply for the disability support pension. People who are forced to complete a program of support often have significant disabilities and medical conditions that span multiple tables. Just because they don't meet 20 points in one impairment table doesn't mean that they are able to look for work.

If you need time off from your program of support because of your disabilities, it doesn't count as time towards what's commonly called your POS, or your program of support. My office helps people all the time who have been caught out by the program of support. They are distressed and frustrated and need advice about how they can meet their complex eligibility requirements. They are often given the wrong information about their responsibilities and are tossed back and forth between Centrelink and their employment service providers. They don't know that having a medical exemption from their mutual obligations under the JobSeeker payment doesn't count as an exemption for their program of support requirements. Some providers have even turned people away because they aren't able to assist people with their level of disability. How are people meant to get help when they are blocked at every step of the way and pinged backwards and forwards between Centrelink and their job service providers? Often the job service providers don't know the rules—and who pays? Who cops it? The person with the disability.

There are a lot of people who are very sick and unable to complete a program of support. They get churned around by the system and end up staying on JobSeeker with rolling medical exemptions—when they have a disability. The reality is that these people should be on DSP. When they apply for income support, we should be assessing their disability, not assessing their capacity to work. The program of support has to end. It acts as a barrier to disabled people successfully claiming the DSP. It must go. During a time of uncertainty, the government is focused on the wrong things. We should be focusing on helping people through this crisis, providing tailored supports and engaging with people on an individual basis to help them into long-term, fulfilling careers.

It is clear we need a new employment system, based on transparent assistance to unemployed people that is supportive, that takes a caring approach and that matches people with work properly. I am deeply concerned, particularly given the different impacts that the crisis is having on people looking for work—on young people, on women and particularly on older people—that the system is not adequately tailored to helping those people find work. You simply can't get a job if the jobs aren't there. With so many people looking for work, bringing in the next phase of mutual obligations is going to harm people, not help people. Putting people through the targeted compliance framework, which is flawed in the first place, will deeply traumatise many people and could lead to many people either being penalised out of the system or dropping out of the system, which is what the evidence shows has been happening. Even before the pandemic, people were dropping out of the system with no visible means of support. The program is a flawed approach. It needs to be reformed. Take this opportunity to reform this program so that people genuinely get help, and so that we get value for the billions and billions of dollars that we spend on the jobactive program.