Many years ago when I was unemployed, things were vastly different to what they are today. Unemployment services were government owned and operated. While there may have been a few problems it was run efficiently and with empathy regarding my situation - which included bouts of homelessness. Professional staff were trained to deal with my issues and I navigated the processes without any angst. I was given many opportunities to improve myself - and I enrolled in courses that were offered to me free of charge. I upskilled as much as possible to obtain employment. I got ahead, got myself off the streets and learned to become financially self-sufficient.
Back then it was called the Commonwealth Employment Service. When you registered for unemployment benefits and made a claim for benefits within 14 days, the benefit would be backdated to the time you made that claim. There was no waiting period. You were interviewed once every three months and your obligations were to look for work, casual or otherwise - and accept a position provided it paid the appropriate award or ongoing rate. There were no "mutual obligations" with private agencies forcing you to look for a specific amount of jobs in a required time frame - although you were actively encouraged to seek opportunities that suited your experience and had to note job interviews and applications on review.
It was in the 1940s that the Labor government brought in what is often called "the welfare state" with national schemes such as "child endowment in 1941, a widow's pension in 1942 (superseded), a wife's allowance in 1943 and unemployment, sickness and special benefits in 1945". "Under the Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Act, men between 16 and 65 and women between 16 and 60 who were residents in this country for at least 12 months were eligible". Robert Menzies opposed the legislation at the time, as he wanted to see a more contribution-based system, like an insurance scheme which would be less expensive for the government to run.
The Commonwealth Employment Service "was established in 1946 with the Re-establishment and the Employment Act 1945. In the years that this government-operational service was functional, was cost effective and efficient. It provided many different resources for unemployed people, including counselling services, jobseeker services and training program link ups.
Things ran reasonably smoothly until 1996, when the Howard government came into power. Almost immediately they set about putting into place the mechanisms for the impending future privatisation of employment services. "In 1996 the department became known as the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA). By 1998, the Howard government had shut down at least 100 Commonwealth Employment Services Offices at a cost of over 3,300 jobs and had relinquished all interests and claims to run employment services directly. "In 1998, the department would cease to operate and all employment service functions were to be split between Department of Social Security and the soon-to-be-named Job Network". In my opinion, like aged care privatisation, this was orchestrated and thought out carefully from the very beginning for the benefit of private providers. It took only two years for Howard to implement the changes that took a quality government service that had initially been implemented as a backstop for those in need - to a privatised service that was inherently focused on the needs of industry and profit rather than the welfare of those it was profiting from. The vulnerable unemployed were now at the mercy of profit-making organisations and church-based groups.
Once Job Services Australia began as Job Network in 1998, the "delivery of employment services was tendered out to Job Network organisations" and these organisations had to compete for a tender. By the second contract process in 2000, major providers were Mission Australia, Wesley Mission and The Salvation Army. Even in 1998, agencies competed for fees of up to $10,000 to place unemployed people into positions while CES agencies were closing around them. The private provider had many incentives to make money from the unemployed and many service agencies sprang up almost overnight to take advantage of government contracts. Unbelievably, over 300 contracts worth over $1.5 billion were awarded with many of them going to low-cost providers with few staff and no training expertise regarding the unemployed. The system from the beginning was ripe for exploitation on a grand scale.
With the postwar welfare scheme rapidly being dismantled by Howard, Dr David Kemp, Minister for Employment proudly announced .."the introduction of the new Job Network was a world-leading social reform.." among other gobsmacking and misguided miscalculations on how well the initial privatisation of the the unemployment system was going to fare. The use of the word "social reform" tells me all I need to know about the machinations of the Howard government as it embarked on one of the biggest acts of social bastardry in decades of government.
In 1998, Work For the Dole was permanently enacted by the Howard government. At the time it was compulsory and was classed as a way of satisfying "mutual obligation requirements" to receive Newstart. During this time the government also tied the unemployment benefit to inflation rather than to wages which effectively froze the payment in time. There have been few substantial rises benefits for more than twenty years.
Mutual obligations were touted as an implied set of contractual obligations between the jobseeker and the job agency entrusted to provide the tools to enable the jobseeker to find work. The reality of that situation was fanciful at best. The unemployed were in most cases there to be exploited in a system of privatisation where profit was essential to the survival of agency.
Max Employment, part of a raft of companies such as Max Solutions with parent company US-based Maximus Inc have benefited enormously from government contracts for the unemployed and were part of Four Corners investigation into the massive taxpayer rip off. Instead of helping the unemployed into employment, billions of dollars were being funnelled into job agencies via false claims. Apart from the money each agency receives for looking after each client, they also receive bonus payments for finding work for their clients. With unemployment statistics on average being eight people to one job (approximate figures in 2015) - the likelihood of the job agency finding work for the unemployed person is diminished. Agencies had been finding creative ways to keep the taxpayer subsidies flowing into the coffers. The more difficult the client was to find work for, the more likely it would be that the agency would make more money. "Job agency employees are encouraged to look into the background of clients and identify those who can be classified into a disadvantaged category". Some agencies have been known to "create" a fraudulent upgrade, which of course created more bonuses for the agency.
Some of the reasoning - if you could call it that - behind the rort-a-thon was that "everybody was doing it". Competition was high to score as many dollars as possible out of the unemployed - and the lack of employment prospects for many increased the possibility of the propensity to rort ten-fold. There was an increase in "training courses" that the unemployed could attend - even if they weren't suitable for them. It was no surprise to learn that some of these training courses were in companies that were associated with the employment agencies themselves. "In four years these training courses cost the taxpayer nearly $400 million regardless of whether they benefited the jobseeker". There was also evidence of forgery by some job agencies with clients' signatures on paperwork the client had no recollection of signing. "Even if the company is not responsible for finding a jobseeker work it can still claim money from the government if it is able to get the signature of the jobseeker".
The government were warned back in 1999 that fraud was rampant within the scheme with approximately 50,000 claims in the first year rorted. If this were the case in the first year with a fledgling scheme - it has only moved onto more deceptive and sophisticated ways of undermining the system with every investigation into misconduct and many incentives to continue to make an enormous profit. Instead of increasing auditing requirements and scrutiny of the agencies that compete for these government contracts, more red tape has been cut to make it easier for a "free market" to operate. This is how the unemployed are now viewed by conservative government and business - a market and a commodity to make a profit from. The Howard government had managed to dehumanise a whole section of the community through the privatisation of unemployment services. The Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison governments - along with the aid of the media - would undermine people on welfare further by vilifying them incessantly and publicly until it was considered normal to call out people as "bludgers".
The employment agency rot had well and truly set in before Morrison was Social Services Minister in 2013 and he did nothing to fix it. The job agency system has been described as 'broken' many times. What started as a move by conservative government away from social governance of the unemployment system had become a system managed by irresponsible private providers of services who were not equipped to handle the intricate problems of unemployment, their clients and what they entailed.
The failure of private employment services to provide sufficient support and empathy was increasingly apparent throughout the Covid pandemic where employment agencies were noted to be threatening and harassing the newly unemployed to fill out job applications despite the suspended mutual obligations. Job agencies receive subsidies for each unemployed person they sign up to their agency. They also receive extra funding for each person who obtains employment. The suspension of obligations effectively decreased the agencies sources of profit and in an effort to continue to make a profit, some agencies were not upholding their end of their agreement and exploiting their client's lack of knowledge regarding the temporary changes put in place by the government during the Covid pandemic.
It should be noted that most agencies were doing well before the pandemic and will continue to do well during and after the pandemic. It has been predicted that job agencies under the Job Active system are set to make record profits during the pandemic recovery period as more people have found themselves unemployed. With 700,000 extra people out of work a conservative estimate - They will reap an extra $200 million courtesy of the taxpayer. The pressure and temptation to make a profit out of their clients will undoubtedly put extra strain on a system that is already failing. People cannot find non-existent jobs and yet agencies are geared to make more of a profit out of each and every client on their books who finds employment. Employment agencies will likely punish their clients for not being able to find these non-existent jobs.
In 2019, the Jobactive Network was the subject of a Senate inquiry. There were stories of "mistreatment by consultants, high turnovers of staff in employment agencies and impossible caseloads, low levels of training and lack of engagement from employers". Gaming the system was commonplace. The government was informed but no action was taken. People were told that the 'agency wasn't there to help the client find a job and was merely there to help them look for one'. The expectation of the agency was that compliance needed to be met by clients and KPIs needed to be met by case managers. Each client was treated as a commodity by the agency regarding how much money they could make out of them as quickly as possible and the best way to make it. If a case manager wasn't meeting their KPIs fast enough, they were often threatened by management to either work faster or find alternative employment.
In my opinion, privatisation does not work. This has been proven time and again - as history has shown. We can see this also evidenced in the Cashless Debit Card, operated by Indue and initially recommended to Tony Abbott in a report from mining billionaire, Andrew Forrest in 2014. What a mining billionaire would know about welfare support for unemployed people is beyond my understanding but it automatically makes me suspicious. Welfare support in its basic form for an unemployed person is approximately $14,000 per year. Indue make close to $14,000 per year off each individual on welfare merely for administration of the card. It is difficult to see how doubling the amount of the cost of welfare for one recipient is economical.
The only people who benefit from privatisation of public services are companies and shareholders. Like the Jobactive Network, the Cashless Debit Card has been deemed a failure. Research into the application of the Cashless Welfare Card has found that the limited access to cash on the card has made it difficult to obtain necessities that were not available by using the card alone. There have been negative impacts on children's health and education. People have found the card difficult to use and at times it would not work at all. Many people have found that the card is dehumanising and demoralising. While the federal government have supplied information on applying for 'opting out' of the card system - this has been plagued by long delays and many people who have applied are still languishing on the card with no idea when or if they will be approved. Some people have been rejected simply because their card history has shown declined transactions or they have moved and are considered to be unstable. The government are making this process as difficult as possible for welfare recipients.
The government will continue to utilise those on welfare as it suits their purpose. The unemployed, through privatisation of employment agencies and the utilisation of the Cashless Debit Card are a source of profit for stakeholders and business interests, some allegedly connected to the LNP themselves. Unemployment is therefore good business for the government. The more a section of the community are dehumanised, the more they are deprived of human qualities and privileges. Their rights will diminish to a point where anything the government does to these people will be justifiable for the greater public interest and will, for the most part, be ignored by others in the community who can't relate to the difficulties the unemployed face.
Dehumanisation is a common practice of government to change public sentiment, diffuse empathy and opinion. Dehumanisation in the past has been used to justify war. At this point we are not too far removed from that rabbit hole. The government is waging a war on those they consider a burden. They have taken their identities, allowed them to be preyed upon by employment agencies, persecuted them to the point of suicide on Robodebt, placed them on cards and made them commodities for profit. When will we be at the point where we consider this to be too extreme?
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