Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The first question I wanted to ask in the Employment portfolio relates to the Employment Fund. A billion dollars is sitting there that is supposed to be used to aid jobseekers in improving their chances for employment. The Employment Fund—a billion dollars—is supposed to be there for jobactive providers to be able to draw down and invest in a jobseeker when they detect an area where they can either get their skills or training improved or deal with any other hurdle that may be inhibiting them from getting work. At the moment, we have unemployment that is tracking roughly the same as what it was when the global financial crisis was here nearly 10 years ago. The Turnbull government has a $1 billion fund, and so far, 30 per cent of the way in, only 15 per cent of that Employment Fund has actually been used to improve the ability of jobseekers to get work. That 15 per cent translates to just over $170 million. This fund is supposed to be used to improve those jobseekers' chance of getting a job. Instead of having the spectacle that we saw today, when the Minister for Human Services thought it was okay to slander an entire population within one of the biggest cities in Western Sydney and try to point fingers at people, why are they not looking at their own failures and making this Employment Fund, which is supposed to get people into work and remove any barrier that is stopping people from getting work, work better?

I have a series of questions that I wanted to put to the minister as to whether or not they will be able to answer them or whether they have identified anything that will be able to rectify the flaws at the heart of the way in which the Employment Fund has been structured and utilised. When we asked why the money was being left in government coffers instead of being used to help jobseekers, the deputy secretary of the Department of Employment on 29 May said, 'The jobactive providers expend the money, and they are asked to do that based on their assessment of the needs of the jobseekers,' yet the jobactive providers are saying that there have been so many hurdles and so many limits as to how they use it. But in actual fact the question comes back to: why isn't the government reviewing? Why isn't the fund being used? Why can't the jobactive providers access the funds in a way that will provide targeted assistance to get people jobs? Will the government commit to help jobseekers find work by spending the money set aside in the $1 billion Employment Fund for training, preparation and support? Secondly, why hasn't the government made changes to the Employment Fund requirements so jobactive providers can better support jobseekers with that resource?

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