Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the coalition was in government, Labor’s debt was paid off and the economy was healthy with a $23 billion surplus. It has taken just two years under Labor to accumulate a massive debt again—a debt unprecedented in Australia’s history—with no plan for recovery. If people are looking for differences between the coalition and the Labor Party, they can start with the budget and the economy. But there are other examples of how different the coalition is from Labor. Labor likes change for change’s sake; it gives them a sense of doing something. Hungry for a headline, it rushes in and makes the grand announcement on policy that often does not stand up to scrutiny. Take the new Job Services Australia program for the unemployed, formerly known as the Job Network. The Job Network was introduced by the former coalition government at a time when unemployment was 7.7 per cent and helped thousands of Australians into jobs with unemployment hitting a low of 3.9 per cent in February 2008. Job Network was a successful and highly effective program. But success and effectiveness are not the benchmarks for Labor. No, the criteria seem to be what will get a headline, how can I make my mark by changing the system and, if it has a coalition label on it, it has to be changed—changed but not necessarily for the better and not in the best interests of the unemployed. And it shows.

The successful Job Network has been morphed into the new Job Services Australia, a program that is convoluted, poorly designed and out of step with the current challenges of rising unemployment and limited job prospects. Highly successful employment service providers lost business, particularly in the not-for-profit sector. This has had highly damaging consequences, with equally damaging flow-on effects on the most vulnerable in our society, the long-term unemployed. I have been contacted by a provider of Work for the Dole services in my electorate who says:

The new Job Services Australia has not been adequately funded to service the supervision of work experience and long term Work for the Dole participants.

And here we get to the heart of the matter, the failure of the Labor designed system. My constituent goes on to say:

We have sent our participants away last week as the Job Services Australia provider did not have enough money in their budget. We deliver the service at the barest, most cost-effective level. No-one can do it cheaper except if they are staffed by volunteers and that is what the providers are asking for.

He suggests that more money is needed for the providers to purchase work experience positions but fears the Labor government will simply put the blame on Job Services Australia providers who tender for the work, knowing the prices were set. My colleague Andrew Southcott MP, shadow minister for employment participation, alerted the community to the funding shortfall under the new Job Services Australia model in a media release in June. He talked about highly successful employment service providers having to cut services, close facilities and, in some cases, withdraw from the market. With job service providers withdrawing from the market and some local providers, like my constituent, having to turn away work experience participants because there is not enough funding, how can that be helping the more than 770,000 job seekers who are in the system?

Currently 61 per cent of job seekers will be classified as ‘Stream 1’ under the new Job Services Australia system. That identifies those job seekers as being the most job ready: only 12.8 per cent of employment services will have funding available for this group. Budget forecasts are for unemployment to rise to between seven and 7.5 per cent by June 2011, with almost a million Australians out of work. An underfunded system is a disastrous outcome for the unemployed. In comparison, the coalition’s Job Network was an effective program for the long-term unemployed. It was adequately funded because of the coalition’s strong economic management and responsiveness to the needs of the long-term unemployed. That is the difference between the coalition and the Labor Party—economic management and responsiveness, not reckless spending and arrogance.