A scathing review of Australia's employment services has found that the system is failing and no longer serves the interests of jobseekers or employers.
The parliamentary inquiry into Workforce Australia handed down its final report on Thursday, making 75 recommendations to overhaul and fix the $9.5bn system.
It was the first assessment of employment services since it was privatised by the Howard government 25 years ago.
Julian Hill, the Labor MP who chaired the inquiry, said full privatisation had failed and the system was, at times, torturing unemployed people.
We've got this Hunger Games-style culture, torturing unemployed people at times or punishing people pointlessly, he told ABC's RN on Friday.
Motivating providers with fear … and it's disconnected from local communities.
The inquiry found that mutual obligations – tasks a jobseeker is required to complete to avoid having their payments cut – should be wound back but not scrapped altogether.
The inquiry said the Workforce Australia system was in need of a rebuild. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers
It's despite Mr Hill likening the penalty system to using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito.
We've designed the entire system around the small minority of people who try and cheat (the system), he said.
More than 70 per cent of people in face-to-face services in the last year have had their payments suspended, the inquiry found.
It is a ridiculous figure and it ties the system up in red tape. The frontline staff report that they now spend more than 50 per cent of their time typing stuff into the computer for social security compliance or for administrative requirements, he said.
There's no need for that level of payment suspensions, it causes trauma. It pushes some people into poverty when they can't pay their bills.
Instead, mutual obligations should be broadened and tailored to the individual, Mr Hill said.
Labor MP Julian Hill sounded the alarm on the system's failures. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage
There were 624,655 people in the Workforce Australia system as of September 2023.
The report recommended a new entity, known as Employment Services Australia, be established and a regulator be created to oversee providers and deal with complaints.
Government has to have a more active role. We've got overwhelming evidence to that effect. There needs to be a public sector core to the system, Mr Hill said.
But asked if the cabinet would endorse the recommendations, Mr Hill said it was up to them.
I believe there is an appetite for reform … and I think we're proposing how that could be done, he said.
We want the government to take it seriously as a serious contribution.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/unemployed-tortured-by-broken-job-system-that-needs-major-overhaul-labor-mp-claims/news-story/2fc402bac1d68ffcd6f54d3f110f07dc
