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

If you want to make light of a young bloke dying on one of your worksites, by all means you can explain why you find that funny. Over a year ago, this young person died on a Work for the Dole site. There was an internal review done by the Department of Employment. It was finished in September and it went to the minister. Despite repeated requests that that report be made public so that people could be given an assurance that Work for the Dole sites are safer, at no time has that been done. At the same time, there was an internally conducted broader review about Work for the Dole safety by Ernst & Young, brought in by the Department of Employment. They checked out all the Work for the Dole sites. Over 200 sites were audited. And what did they find? Over 30 per cent of those sites were not meeting expectations on safety.

We had a young person die, and no report was provided as to what happened in Toowoomba—none. The reason offered is that the Queensland workplace authorities are conducting their own review and the Turnbull government want to wait for that review to be released before they respond. But why can't you give some sort of detail about the steps taken, not necessarily referring to the incident itself but giving an assurance that things are being done more safely? Then, when you get another consultant's report that comes out and says there are problems and safety expectations are not being met, you still do not provide a ministerial statement that says, 'This is where we're at right now in terms of making it safer, and when the Queensland state report comes out we will provide a more detailed report as to what is going on.' Nothing has been provided whatsoever.

Here is where the problem is: the government force people to go into a program knowing that there are safety issues. They force young people to go into that program. Here is the second problem: this program is tanking under this government. Between 80 and 90 per cent of people who go through that program do not end up with a full-time job three months after they have finished the Work for the Dole program. Why? No-one can explain why this incredibly low success rate is happening. A high failure rate is occurring under their watch, and no steps are taken to fix it. We get told in the budget, 'We're going to "refocus" it.' And what happens? What we find out through estimates is that there will be less money and fewer places. There are no answers as to what will be done to make Work for the Dole work.

Work for the Dole itself has operated under both political parties when they were in government, both Labor and Liberal. It is an important activation measure to ensure that people are going through and building up their work experience and job skills so that they can get work. But under this government it is failing. It is unsafe. There are serious concerns about whether or not safety expectations are being met. People are forced to go through it. They are not getting jobs at the end of it.

Frankly, a cynic would think that, in cutting the number of places, the government are more interested in a statistical ploy: if they have fewer places but they get similar outcomes, it will actually look like they are putting more people into work as a result of Work for the Dole. This is not a game. This should be about providing people with genuine skills that will ensure that they get a job at the end of it. If the government are saying that they want to see people get work instead of again pointing fingers at people that are not getting work, show us what you are doing to fix it up.

Our questions are: will the government actually be honest about why their jobs programs are failing and what steps they are taking to fix them up? When will they commit to fixing Work for the Dole and improving job outcomes for participants other than by engaging in cheap statistical games to make themselves look better with the outcome instead of fundamentally reforming the system?

Why commit to a Work for the Dole refocus that does not even help Australians actually find work? When can the family of the young bloke who died on a Work for the Dole worksite in Toowoomba in April 2016 get any kind of answer out of this government as to why they had systems that were not meeting expectations? Can the government give assurance to the other people going through the program that they are going through a safe program?

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