Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment Participation (Senator Arbib) to questions without notice asked by Senators Fifield and Payne today relating to employment services.

I should point out—as Senator Arbib leaves the chamber—that in response to my question, Senator Arbib said that the last time I asked a question about employment services in this chamber was when, in government, I asked one of Senator Abetz. I am very disappointed I have made so little impact on Senator Arbib. I in fact asked Senator Arbib questions on Tuesday, on Wednesday and on Thursday last week. I thought I meant much more to Senator Arbib, but clearly not!

The killer line from those opposite in defence of their Job Services Australia tender is that the coalition introduced competitive tendering for employment services. Senator Collins usually interjects in these debates that the coalition introduced competitive tendering in government and that Labor’s tendering bungle is therefore somehow our fault. I have to say that is typical Collins logic. The coalition did indeed introduce a paradigm shift in the provision of job placement services. The old CES, the Commonwealth Employment Service, was progressively replaced by the Job Network. A system of support and placement for the unemployed was introduced which, combined with the strong economy under the coalition, saw unemployment at record lows. When the coalition was in office, we relet a number of contracts. There are always winners and losers, as those opposite have pointed out, as there are in any competitive tender. But the outcry from providers in this government’s tender is unlike anything that has ever been heard in the sector before.

The opposition’s concerns in relation to the Job Services Australia tender, as I have said previously, initially related to its design. Our prime concern was that 100 per cent of provider services were put to tender at the same time and also that the weighting for past performance was only 30 per cent. As a result, many providers with a great track record lost contracts. I cited one today in my question to Senator Arbib: Wesley Uniting Employment, which provided employment services for 11 years under the Job Network. They have to close 60 of their 68 sites, which will see 350 staff lose their jobs.

The other part of this is that there are some job services providers, like Wesley Uniting Employment, which went the extra mile. Wesley will be forced, as a result of the tender process, to withdraw $300 million from services they provide to the community—extra things which I mentioned in my question such as a campsite for disadvantaged children, rehabilitation work in jails and a regional Homes for Hope program in Port Macquarie. Minister Arbib did not address Wesley Uniting Employment in any way, shape or form in his answer, so I can only assume he is completely unaware of that situation.

The 47 per cent of job seekers will have to find new providers and new case managers as a result of this tender arrangement. Senator Payne asked some very thoughtful questions today on indigenous transitions. Senator Arbib did seem to confuse Indigenous employment programs with Job Services Australia transition 2. I am sure Senator Payne will touch on that, but these are two separate things. Confusion aside, the minister, again, has assured the Senate that all is well and that job seekers will be fine—we will wait and see. He has also assured us that failed tenderers will be okay, but we already know that the Agency Adjustment Fund has been well and truly oversubscribed.

We learned last week, as a result of questions from Dr Southcott, that there are now questions that need to be answered by the government in relation to the probity and integrity of this tender process. We learned that phone calls were placed between a tenderer and the former minister’s office during the tender process. The former minister’s defence was that those discussions on the phone were purely logistical in nature. But the communications protocols for this tender do not provide a get-out-of-jail card for logistical communications. They say—and it is clear—that:

… persons who have been identified as being in positions of potential influence over the operation of the tender process will not enter into discussions or otherwise engage in any activity with tenderers …

That happened. This needs to be referred to the Auditor-General for a full inquiry and it should happen immediately. This government has discovered a new found fondness for the Auditor-General, and this should be one task that he is given today.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am absolutely gobsmacked that today, of all days, we have Senator Fifield rising, as he has, on the issue of job seekers after we have had a weekend of attacks by the press and, mainly, by the Leader of the Opposition and Senator Abetz on the Prime Minister and the Treasurer of this country. And what do we get in question time today from this rabble over here? Not a word; not a mention. I think Senator Abetz was still looking for the email. It is absolutely ridiculous that you come here on what is an important issue, but one on which you have not said a word for the last week. All you have wanted to do is attack the Treasurer and the Prime Minister of this country, but when you get an opportunity to question on these issues in parliament what do you do? You turn tail and run away from the issue. You run away from the issue because you know that you have been completely wrong in the allegations that you have made against the Prime Minister and against the Treasurer; a Prime Minister and Treasurer who lead the government, are concerned about the unemployed in this country, and are concerned about job seekers but who have a vision and a plan for this country, which you do not have. You have no vision and no plan—nothing for the future of this country.

All you want to engage in is smear, innuendo and witch-hunts. That is the form of the opposition in this parliament—baseless attacks on the PM and Treasurer, and opposition to every initiative that is taken to protect the unemployed and the workers of this country in the face of the greatest global financial crisis we have ever seen. But what would you expect from an opposition that is led by the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull—the bully from Bellevue Hill?

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Refer to the people in the other place by their proper titles, Senator Cameron.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition has bullied—

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He’s the current leader!

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He might not be there much longer—that is correct. But the Leader of the Opposition has bullied a young staffer—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Cameron, if you read your standing orders carefully you will find that using the term ‘bullying’ is imputing improper motives. I ask you to withdraw that.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. We hear so much about probity, so much about tendering and so much about the proper way to do business. In 1997, the Leader of the Opposition did a deal with Larry Adler of FAI. And what was that deal? That deal was that the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, would be given $1.5 million to find a buyer for FAI. And what did the Leader of the Opposition do? No independent assessment of the value of FAI; what he told Goldman Sachs was that it would be worth $20 million. And yet, it was sold for $295 million. Look at the misery and the loss that was inflicted on investors in this country then. In June 2006, legal proceedings were taken for misleading investors and misleading the public. That is the calibre of the Leader of the Opposition that we have at the moment in this country. There is no attempt to deal with the real issues facing Australians, no attempt to deal with the global financial crisis and no attempt to stand up for Australians; just more smear and innuendo. (Time expired)

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment Participation and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Government Service Delivery (Senator Arbib) to questions without notice asked today, relating to Employment.

I am happy to tell the chamber what there was no attempt to do. There was no attempt by Senator Cameron to deal with the issues at hand, which included Senator Arbib’s fundamental incapacity in particular to answer the question that I asked of him. There were three very simple questions, in fact, and I remind the chamber that they were whether the minister was satisfied that there were proper arrangements in place to ensure that both the Indigenous Employment Program’s employment panel and the Economic Development and Business Support Panel for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders would commence in nine days time. That is next Wednesday, 1 July—next week.

The minister was able to tell us—not entirely confidently—that he thought that that was pretty much under control but that it was a major task and a major transition. The opposition does not cavil with any of that; we understand and acknowledge that. But there is a commitment from this government to commence on 1 July, for which we have absolutely no evidence that the date will actually be met. In fact, when we asked about whether the successful tenderers for both of those panels in both of those extremely strategic and important areas for a very vulnerable part of the Australian community were able to be made public, what could the minister responsible for the area tell us? The silence was deafening. He said he would go away and find out whether the tenderers in his portfolio area were able to be made public. This was for tenders due to start on 1 July—next week.

I find it very hard to believe—and I think most senators in the chamber who have any experience either with the complexities of government administration or, for that matter, the complexities of business would agree—that tenderers who have responded to a request for tender and apparently been awarded a tender are going to be able to establish themselves in the space of time available between now and 1 July. Many of them might have to find premises. They might have to hire staff. They might have to establish information technology systems. All of that must be up and running by next week. I do not think so. I do not think it is nearly as simple as the minister hoped he could tell us it was in question time. In fact, in his additional remarks that he provided to us at the end of question time there was no more illumination provided to the chamber at all. I am not sure why he wasted his time or ours with those comments.

What is more disturbing, though, as Senator Fifield pointed out in his remarks taking note here this afternoon, is the confusion in the minister’s response between the Job Services Australia activities and the separate tender for the panels. My questions were very simple questions, and the minister went on to relate to us an experience he had recently with a visit to an Indigenous training provider in the construction sector. As I commented, I assume that was part of the Prime Minister’s hard hat led recovery policy. One had to wear a hard hat to the construction site, I am sure. The minister, in indicating that, showed quite clearly that he is in fact conflating and confusing these two parts of his portfolio. But you would find some very nervous people if you were visiting Indigenous training operations in this country at the moment or if you were visiting employment programs which are waiting to see what is going to happen across the whole range of the employment and vocational training sectors. You would find communities in the state of New South Wales—in Senator Arbib’s own state—who are very concerned about the lack of certainty that they see in their particular area of activity. They are concerned about not knowing what is going to happen to them in relation to jobs and about not being able to identify these much vaunted panels.

The phrase that the government has used and used repeatedly, and which we in the opposition think is a very important part of Indigenous policy in this country, is ‘closing the gap’. The gap is getting very, very close come 1 July, and we did not have an answer here today for an activity that is supposed to be up and running next week. Looking at the website and the minister’s portfolio does not give us any more information; it is equally vague on the details and the terms going forward. The Indigenous Employment Panel and the Economic Development and Business Support Panel for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders are informed by the website up until the date of lodgement of tender but not beyond that, so if you are a hopeful tenderer—if you are hoping, for example, to be a staff member in one of these organisations—what possible certainty do you have between now and next week? The answer is very simple: you have nothing at this stage. It is not good enough for professionals and for people in this sector and in this minister’s portfolio to have to put up with that. It is not good enough to be unable to tell the chamber this afternoon what the status of the tenders is, who the tenderers are and what is happening moving forward from 1 July.

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say that being lectured by the opposition on probity, on good governance and on transparency has to be one of the all-time jokes of my political career in this parliament. I have been here for quite a few years, during the Keating government, the Hawke government and now the Rudd government. I have many, many examples that I can point to of the lack of transparency, of the political interference and of the straight-out rorting of government programs that went on during the Howard government years. I will mention a few of them in a couple minutes, but I first of all want to go to the questions that were asked of Minister Arbib, particularly those relating to employment services.

This, of course, has been an issue that the opposition have tried to get up as some sort of terrible scandal. What are the real facts? The real facts are that the Rudd government put out to tender the new Job Services scheme to follow on from the previous government’s Job Network. I was here when Job Network was introduced. Senator Fifield talked about how they progressively replaced the CES. You did no such thing. What the Howard government did was gut the CES. It had its faults, but it also had many, many examples of officers—decent, hardworking public servants around this country—who provided an absolutely first-class service for job seekers. But it was because of the drive to privatise the employment services that the CES was gutted. I can recall that under the tendering system that occurred then there were people who were successful in that tendering process that did not even have an office, did not have a fax machine and did not have a phone to run an employment service. It was an absolute farce.

What has happened under this government’s program is that it has been an open and transparent tender process. Almost 3,000 bids were received from over 400 organisations across all employment services, so it was clearly a competitive process with a strong field of candidates. As has been noted by the minister on a number of occasions, not everybody can be successful, and that is unfortunate, but that is the nature of the business. That included some of the previous providers not being successful because, on balance, other services, tenders or bids were seen as preferred, being more competitive and better according to the judgment made—which has been backed up by the probity process.

Indeed, whilst the opposition picks out a particular service in this or that electorate to highlight what they claim are failures of transparency, proper accountability and proper process, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of current five-star providers will be delivering Job Services Australia. Many of those that missed out will, of course, benefit from the adjustment grant payments. I do not recall such an adjustment grant payment system being available when the Howard government changed the scheme.

What we have is a process that has been transparent. I can compare that, as I said, to many other examples under the previous government: education funding, where the previous government skewed education funding to disadvantage public schools; the regional rorts program, into which I chaired an inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration and for which I could reiterate a litany of schemes that were rejected by the departmental advisers but nevertheless approved by the previous government; the Seasprite helicopter project, where we ended up paying over a billion dollars to cancel that failure— (Time expired)

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to take note of answers given in question time by Senator Arbib, and in particular Senator Arbib’s continued reference to the supposed trumpeting of this government’s programs—of this government reducing seven doors for job seekers to one and reducing seven programs available to job seekers to one. What Senator Arbib has failed to explain is how and why this should be allowed to deliver a seventh of the outcomes for Australia’s job seekers. Reducing seven programs and seven doors to one just means a seventh of the jobs, if that, for Australia’s job seekers.

The second thing that his answers in question time today reveal is that Labor’s ‘earn or learn’ policy is nothing other than spin over substance—spin over a seventh of the outcomes and a seventh of the substance. It has at least three problems. To start with, Labor’s program was premised on full employment. Clearly we are not heading into that scenario. Secondly, it assumes that the majority of job seekers will find their own jobs. Thirdly, in putting the whole process out to 100 per cent tendering for the first time since the year 2000, it is going to cause significant disruption to job seekers without the necessary support. ‘Earn or learn’? ‘Earn or learn’ might as well be ‘yearn and yearn’—yearn to earn and yearn to learn. It might as well be ‘turn and churn’. It might as well be, ‘Take your turn and expect to churn.’ On the Wesley Uniting Employment services example today, coincidentally they are left with about a seventh of their sites—eight out of 68. A seventh of their sites can be left open.

The minimum early intervention aspect of Labor’s program, assuming that most job seekers will find their own jobs, totally undermines ‘earn or learn’. It means ‘yearn and yearn’—yearn to earn and yearn to learn. There is the disruption to be caused to job seekers by the transition from one job provider to another. We have three to six months, in the best case, before new employment providers are up and running to assist job seekers. How does that translate? It translates into little other than: ‘Wait your turn, job seeker, and expect to churn. Expect to churn jobs if you are lucky, and expect to churn from one job service provider to another.’

For all Labor’s debt and deficit, we get a seventh of the outcomes in employment services if we are lucky. We get a seventh of the jobs for Australia’s unemployed if we are lucky. For all Labor’s spin over substance about ‘earn or learn’, tragically, all it is to Australia’s job seekers is ‘yearn and yearn’—yearn to earn and yearn to learn. It is, ‘Wait your turn and expect to churn.’

Question agreed to.