Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday the government announced a $25 a week increase to JobSeeker, which is mean-spirited, cruel and in fact insulting to jobseekers. At the same time they announced their 'DobSeeker', an insidious idea that will see people on income support, who are already oversurveilled by this government—with the issuing of demerit points and payment suspensions—now having to worry about whether someone is going to dob them in on the 'DobSeeker' line for not taking a job; never mind that there are 1.5 million people on the JobSeeker and youth allowance payments and only 175,000 jobs.

This is in the context that the job provider network, jobactive, which is meant to be finding people these jobs, is rife with bullying, harassment and people being ignored or treated very poorly by their job service providers. While the government are doing next to nothing about these systemic issues with the jobactive system, they have empowered employers with the means to intimidate, bully and harasses jobseekers. As I said last night when I was talking about the jobactive process, my office has for years been contacted by people who have been poorly treated by their providers and who have had little areas of recourse because the very people who are treating them so poorly have the power to cut their payments.

The government won't acknowledge how broken the job provider system they are pouring billions of dollars into is and they won't acknowledge what is actually happening to people on the jobactive provider system. So last night I read out a number of excerpts from people's lived experience. I promised that I will keep doing it and here are some more. These are the lived experiences of people who are trying their very best to find work and who are part of the jobactive process. I articulated this one last night: 'I was diagnosed with a degenerative muscular disease and need ongoing physio. Due to the loss of muscle tone, I have had to drag my right leg upstairs and often can't climb them at all. The job network provider thought it would be a great idea to enrol me in a forklifting course. The problem was there were steep narrow stairs to get on the forklift. Imagine my embarrassment when I couldn't climb on the forklift with everybody in the class watching. I was then told I couldn't complete the course. In response, my JSP accused me of not trying hard enough and threatened to have my payment suspended.'

This is another one: 'All they do is look at online job-listing sites. I do this myself regularly. What I'd hoped they would do is reach out to local employers on my behalf and negotiate to create a position that suits me. Instead they suggest I apply for positions, which I then had to point out that I'm not qualified for.'

Here is another one: 'I have had multiple people working on my case. It changes a lot, which is frustrating.' And another one: 'The constant nagging is hell. It causes a lot of anxiety and zaps my limited energy.' And another person said: 'I used to have two casual jobs. I'm 100 per cent serious when I say they did not help me find these jobs. I did it all myself. They gave me some fuel vouchers at one point because of the long distance and paid for some work pants but they did not help me find the jobs yet I was always nagged for my pay slips and had to tell them shifts and hours as well as report in to Centrelink. Only now have I learnt they needed these for their grant.'

This is a message I received from someone who's working in a management position with a provider: 'From a DSP'—which is the disability employment system—'provider perspective, I see most of the criticism of employment services come down to one thing: the excessive compliance system imposed on jobseekers and providers by the government. It's a self-defeating system designed solely to punish the unemployed. It does nothing to actually support jobseekers find and retain work. From a jobseeker perspective, this involves having to dealt with mutual obligations and the threat of losing payments through the targeted compliance framework. From a provider perspective, it represents an absolute waste of time having to satisfy bureaucratic contractual requirements. The average employment consultant will spend more than half their time conducting exercises such as holding routine fortnightly face-to-face appointments, updating job plans or applying compliance measures. This is not how we were on operate if we were solely tasked with helping jobseekers finding work. This places a major constraint on operation, customer service and ability to provide individual service. The economics of the DES contract mean most providers operate in a fairly standard way. Common practice is an employment consultant with no formal qualifications or training earning between $50,000 and $65,000 and expected to work with a caseload of 40 to 50 clients. Employment targets are often around 10 per cent of active case load per month or four to five employment placements. Fifty clients times two fortnightly appointments times 30 minutes equals 50 work hours per month even before the employment consultant is able to do any employer marketing. Because the employment consultant is spending so much time on contractual requirements, most jobseekers who find work do it by themselves. Many providers are upfront about that to ensure jobseekers don't have an expectation that the employment consultant will find them a job.' And actually do what they're being paid billions of dollars to do—that was my editorial just then. 'I'm not convinced we'd see much of a change in employment outcomes if all employment services in their current form were scrapped.'

Another person said, 'When a client finds a job on their own, they quite rightly feel that the employment service providers did nothing. Jobseekers will complain about being chased for payslips to allow the employment service providers to earn employment outcome payments. This is again more compliance work which once again takes away available time to actually support jobseekers.'

Another person said, 'I was studying at TAFE doing a certificate II in hospitality and, in the middle of my exams, I was told if I didn't participate in a Work for the Dole activity at the same time my exams were my payment would be cut off. I went from studying for my exams to making candles and soap for a company that would make profit off them at markets. There would be people upstairs also packing food for homeless communities while also probably going hungry themselves. I know I was. I had to live off lettuce and salad dressing for two weeks just to get by and, as a result, ended up injuring myself. I've been left with $8 for the rest of the fortnight for food. I've had others help me, but it's just constantly being broke and having mental health stress over the next week and waiting until payday so you can be stressed all over again.'

Another person: 'Most recently within the past few weeks I've had to reverse market myself to employers, having my job consultant ring me and threaten to cut off my payment and add demerit points if I didn't submit some business names and phone numbers to her. I only have one demerit point, and that was because I was so tired from my depression that I accidentally slept through the phone call and my alarm waking me to take that phone call. I worry about submitting phone numbers of employers to her because I never hear back from promising employers when I do as I believe that the job providers are doing harassing phone calls to the numbers I provide, trying to sell them a package deal of, 'You'll get X amount of money if you hire them,' as if I'm a piece of furniture or meat to be sold to them.'

Another person: 'I'm nearly 61 years old and have been applying for work in between university degrees since 2012. My service provider asked me if I work on a voluntary basis for a not-for-profit association. I replied that I work voluntarily for two community groups that I have established in my community. My provider told me to register at Centrelink as a volunteer with my community groups, and then I don't need to come into their office anymore for meetings. I pointed out that this does not assist me in finding a paid job. They explained that I am probably too old to gain employment and that I can continue to live on Jobseeker until I qualify for the pension in six years time.' This is another example of age discrimination. This system is broken. It needs total reform.