KEY POINTS:
- A landmark report has warned Australia's unemployment system is no longer fit for purpose.
- It found job seekers face "pointless" requirements and disproportionate punishments.
- It says the system is based on false assumptions about unemployed people.
A parliamentary committee has filtered through 300 submissions and listened to 60 hours of witness testimony to answer exactly that question.
The Workforce Australia handed down its final report on Thursday, making 75 recommendations to fix a system it says actually hurts job seekers and employers alike.
Committee chair Julian Hill says mutual obligations are like using a "nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito". Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
"It’s harsh but true to say that Australia no longer has an effective, coherent national employment services system," the Labor MP wrote in his foreword.
"We have an inefficient, outsourced, fragmented social security compliance management system that sometimes gets someone a job against all odds."
Here are the key takeaways from the report.
'A nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito'
Mutual obligations are a major target in the report.
Mutual obligations are the tasks a job seeker is required to complete to avoid having their payments cut — usually things like applying for jobs, and showing up to job interviews.
But the committee heard evidence that job seekers subject to mutual obligations actually took longer to find work than those who weren't.
The report warns job seekers are forced to complete a range of "pointless" tasks "with little or no relevance to their needs or aspirations". This includes forcing people to apply for jobs they have no realistic chance of getting, just to maintain their payments.
It also says punishments for failing to complete mutual obligations are "out of control", describing them as "harsh, punitive, often disproportionate and simply ineffective at supporting people into work".
Hill is particularly scathing of the mutual obligations system, which he likens to "using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito".
The report says the current system means providers have the wrong incentives, while employers are flooded with unrealistic job applications.
"Employers have made it clear that the system adds little value to their business, and that it repeatedly tries to force unsuitable job seekers into vacancies without providing adequate incentives or support," it says.
"In too many cases, mutual obligations are actually making people less employable."
The Antipoverty Centre said 83 per cent of applicants had received a payment suspension notice in the three months between July and September.
The false beliefs driving the job seeker system
Hill argues that the system is driven by two false beliefs:
- Unemployment is always an individual's fault
- Harsh performance management will inevitably lead to better results
"This drives the belief that if you only beat disadvantaged people hard enough to do the same things over and over again they’ll somehow magically get a job, and if they don’t they’re lazy – the pernicious myth of the ‘dole-bludger’," he writes.
CALD and Indigenous specialists needed
There is a desperate need for job coaches with expertise working with various communities.
Multicultural Australia told the committee that "structural disadvantages, complex cultural transitions, disrupted education pathways, traumatic past experiences, and system biases in the labour market" often excluded newly arrived migrants and refugees from the workforce.
The report recommends a culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) specialist be allocated to regions with a highly multicultural population, with a specialist to cover multiple regions with smaller CALD populations.
People from CALD backgrounds should also be able to access digital support services in their own language, the report says.
"CALD, migrant, and refugee job seekers often experience significant barriers to social and economic participation, including a lack of local work experience, limited professional networks, and language barriers," it says.
It also recommends that Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) provide services to Indigenous job seekers.
"ACCOs are proven to deliver better results on average for this cohort. [They] may need to be supported through co-delivery or additional financial backing," it says.
The report suggests specialists for job seekers living with disability, and for those leaving prison, who it says face particular challenges in re-entering the workforce.
Better staff, better pay
Hill paints a bleak picture of the employment services workforce.
The committee chair writes that the sector is "in crisis", with a frontline staff turnover rate of more than 40 per cent. Many of those who remain "do not possess the skills or qualifications to support an increasingly vulnerable and heterogenous client caseload".
"So many job agency staff are compassionate, caring people who deliver great outcomes and small miracles in difficult circumstances," he writes.
"Providers overall want to help people ... [But] almost without exception staff told us that they were consistently having to fight against the system to help their clients."
That includes inefficient IT systems and draconian "red tape", which causes workers to spend more than half their time on administration, rather than with clients, Hill says.
The report calls for the sector to be "re-professionalised".
That means minimum skills and qualification standards for workers, but also wages and conditions which ensure jobs remain attractive.
