Unemployed advocates brief Parliamentary Committee on Employment Services
We pleaded with them to shut down the brutal poverty machine, and give us back our dignity
Content warning: Mental health, suicide and self-harm
Today, representatives from the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union (AUWU) and the Antipoverty Centre (AC) were invited to a private briefing of the Workforce Australia Employment Services Select Committee.
Attending in-person was Daniel Levy (AUWU Secretary) and Kristin O’Connell (AC Co-coordinator). Joining online were Tracey Smallwood (AUWU President), Jeremy Heywood (AUWU Vice President), Raquel Araya (AUWU Advocacy Coordinator), Jeremy Poxon (AUWU Media Spokesperson) and Jay Coonan (AC Co-coordinator).
Below are the opening remarks and highlights of other comments we each delivered to the Committee. We do not have any faith our pleas and recommendations will be acted upon, either immediately or after the Committee hands down its report.
We therefore invite you to RSVP to our #BTPM protest on Monday 17 October.
AUWU Comments
I am Daniel Levy, National Secretary of the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union, representing over 16,500 supporters and members. With me via teleconference is Tracey Smallwood, AUWU President and long-time coordinator of the AUWU Advocacy team which has been on the frontline of helping people to deal with the endless decades of brutality inflicted on welfare recipients by successive Liberal and Labor governments. I am also joined by Jez Heywood, AUWU Vice President and media coordinator, Raquel Araya, current AUWU advocacy coordinator, who is currently visiting family in Chile so apologies for any latency issues, and Jeremy Poxon AUWU committee member and media spokesperson.
AUWU acknowledges the rightful Custodians of the Lands on which we meet, collectively the Aboriginal communities of Australia, who share connections to Country maintained over tens of thousands of years. Sovereignty was never ceded, and this always was and always will be Aboriginal land. The ongoing brutality of colonial violence is readily observable in our welfare system, where various government programs precisely target Indigenous communities for surveillance, punishment and austerity. The recent repeal of the cashless debit card continued by other means the racist practice of forced income management in remote communities.
AUWU comes to this Committee with three broad pleas.
Turn off the emiseration machine that is the Targeted Compliance Framework immediately and permanently.
Understand that the activation theory of unemployment has been thoroughly debunked and now occupies the same dustbin of history as neoliberalism and trickle-down economics.
Ensure that all future employment services programs are administered as a public good, account for work already being done, and are meaningfully co-designed by people with lived expertise, with final approval of any programs resting in our hands.
It was odd to receive an email from Committee chair Julian Hill last week thanking AUWU for our work. Like every non-profit organisation assisting members of society doing it tough, we only exist because of government failure to properly take care of its citizens. As I later wrote to Julian, the best thank you we could get is if his Albanese government turned off the Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF) immediately.
The TCF is a Kafkaesque brutality machine, which Julian himself recently likened to the Squid Game. I assure you it is worse. There are so many more victims of the TCF. And we are the ones who deal with the victims your government creates. We are tired, we are experiencing our own varying levels of life hardship. We are begging you to shut it down. How can you acknowledge the reality of what you are doing and not call for the TCF’s immediate suspension?
It underscores the fact that this entire committee is simply political theatre. None of you will ever deal with the consequences of these disgraceful policies, nor will you ever feel the desperation which results from your inaction to shut the poverty machine down as it continues to harm millions of Australians en masse.
They cannot wait for February 2024.
Our second recommendation is that you learn the lesson immediately that ‘activation theory’ has been debunked. The middle word of the TCF is ‘Compliance’ and polices welfare recipients as if they are criminals. And it doesn’t work. The length of time people take to find work while being subject to mutual obligations has only increased with the TCF.
One of our long-time AUWU volunteers David O’Halloran completed an entire PhD studying this phenomenon, which has been submitted to the Committee, alongside with multiple reports and submissions we have compiled in recent times summarising our findings from both academia and our boots-on-the-ground advocacy work.
The outcome of this work has been to find that these marketised services do nothing but line the pockets of providers, delivering nothing of use to participants and fat outcome payments to providers. Indeed our recent deployment of David’s peer-reviewed rating scale for ESPs has seen them score an average of just 2 out of 5 across hundreds of participant surveys.
Tony Burke’s recent leaked speech challenging providers to demonstrate that they do anything useful at all is testament to our findings. And yet you persist with a Committee you do not need, all the while keeping the brutality machine in operation for the duration of this political theatre.
And that is because Burke’s and Hill’s words are style without substance. The reality is that some of these market providers are massive corporations and donors to both the major parties. And, in a wider context, both the Labor and Liberal parties gleefully refer to themselves as “friends” of business who wish to keep “business conditions” the same. Business conditions are that wages have stagnated entirely in real terms in the last 4 decades.
And we, the unemployed, are the main vehicle you have exploited to achieve this. The alternative to a low-paid exploitative job is economic desperation on payments pegged at half the Henderson poverty line, and routine bullying from a market provider bent on getting a contract payment out of you.
You don’t need this committee. The work has already been done by us and others, completely unpaid, to learn all of these lessons for you. . Our volunteers are proof of what a crock activation theory is. We do backbreaking work with an output and intensity the likes of which none of you careerist hacks could dream of matching.
Bringing us to our third recommendation. After you shut off the brutality machine, reform this into a Committee devoted to crafting a voluntary employment service, administered as a public good.
Many people on payments do survival caring work for themselves, their children, their partners and their elderly loved ones. The proportions of people trapped in your brutal poverty machine who are living with disability or have caring commitments are astronomical.
Instead of being treated with kindness and support to find work that is meaningful to them, or to have the work they are already doing recognised as such, they are bullied and treated like criminals.
Enough.
If you are serious about this Committee, your final report should be subject to the veto of our members, though we do not hold our breath.
A detailed thread outlining AUWU’s further contributions after these opening remarks can be found at https://twitter.com/AusUnemployment
Antipoverty Centre Comments
I acknowledge the rightful owners of the Ngunnawal Country, on which we meet today, and pay respect to Ngunnawal Elders and Elders across the continent. It’s particularly important to highlight the ongoing colonial violence inflicted through the welfare system, and in the context in which we’re meeting today, the severe and disproportionate harm caused to First Peoples by the Community Development Program and ParentsNEXT. In the three months between April and June 2021 when CDP was compulsory, 93% of the 30,000 participants who received a payment suspension were Indigenous, and First Nations people experience disability (38%) at more than double the rate of the general population (18%).
I note that we have provided the committee some of our related work for the following inquiries and departmental reviews of the Disability Support Pension, Disability Employment Services, the New Employment Services Model, and the current inquiries into Work and Care and the Equal Pay Bill.
We have also submitted a range of stories contributed by people in poverty about their experiences of unemployment and the welfare system. We are providing these unedited examples to demonstrate the scale and complexity facing people seeking sustainable employment and to highlight the vast inadequacy of the punitive and pointless activities people who rely on Centrelink payments are subjected to because of mandatory participation requirements.
You cannot separate unemployment from the person who is unemployed, and their whole life circumstances. Not every example includes someone currently in employment services, because the division between the needs of unemployed people in and outside the system is arbitrary. These examples also demonstrate the immense value of unpaid contributions to the community, both from people who need a social security payment and those who support them in the struggle to survive unemployment.
From our experience of the thousands of stories we have received in the short time we have been providing support to and advocating for people like ourselves in the welfare system, we can assure you the below examples are not outliers. You may question the number of people who discuss disability and the relevance of this to your committee. Hopefully you are already aware that disabled people are dramatically over-represented on working age Centrelink payments, including unemployment payments. Quarterly demographics data published by the Department of Social Services shows that 359,000 people on the JobSeeker payment (43% of total recipients) have partial capacity to work and a medical condition or disability. The top two recorded conditions are psychosocial and musculo/skeletal and connective tissue. There are 9,000 people with an intellectual or learning disability. The Antipoverty Centre has conducted two in depth surveys of welfare recipients since mid-2021, and received responses from many people who have not disclosed their disability to Centrelink due to fear of it affecting their payment.
When you read the stories we have shared with you you will notice a common theme: it’s poverty. Poverty is a barrier to work and it creates additional ones. That’s why your employment services system and this inquiry into it are pointless.
Employment services purport to address unemployment and consistently fail to do so. Privatisation and need for profit are part of the problem. But social security law – specifically the existence of compulsory participation requirements for people on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance, Parenting Payment and the Disability Support Pension – are the root of the vast harm being caused. Unemployment is designed into the economy and you are punishing people for it. This inquiry must look at alternatives to punitive and compulsory programs that will provide meaningful support for people facing systemic barriers to work. Solutions must be local, community-led and include a wider range of options such as government assistance for worker-controlled cooperatives.
During this session we would like to talk to you about:
Our approach to preparing submissions to this inquiry, which are to be co-authored with groups of people in poverty who participate in workshops over the coming months
A proposal for community engagement to develop a new approach to employment programs centred on the needs of unemployed people and their local communities
Our concerns about the dramatic increase in detailed data collection on welfare recipients
A practical pathway to end for Work for the Dole that can be implemented straight away
Ten specific things the government must do immediately to minimise the harm being done to people for the crime of being unemployed.
Human cost
It is difficult to convey the scale of the harm we witness in our community every day. But we will try once again because we need you to understand the urgency of change.
We come to this place over and over and the extremely harrowing stories we and others share are ignored – people feel suicide and self harm are their only option, and people like us and those in our community who are already under great strain ourselves are doing the government’s work for it in keeping each other alive. You might think the main cause is poverty, but “mutual” obligations are cited by many as a major contributor to their distress, not just meagre payment levels. You all supported the legislation that introduce the latest iteration of this nightmarish system and saying you didn’t have enough information to know how bad it would be is no excuse. You are all responsible for what is happening.
We are effectively providing a free support service, which we are not qualified to do, because people have no trust in institutions. Trying to force them to engage with mental health services will not solve this problem. You need to put an immediate end to the cause of the harm.
We are unpaid and we are trying to survive on unemployment payments and we are doing endless labour, doing the government’s job for it, because you refuse to listen, waste our time and weight our contributions differently to to the providers who get to call the shots and harvest the profits. You need to stop making us do this over and over again and look at the work we have already done.
People talk to us because they trust us, and they fear government. Stop expecting that every person who does so is equally comfortable having their information or identity shared with you and the department. Every time we say an issue is systemic and offer a solution to reduce or stop the harm we are asked to give over information so that an individual case can be acted upon. It’s unacceptable and it’s not a solution. Based on the track record of how people are treated when we have connected them with the department it is unsafe for us to do so.
When we met with employment minister Tony Burke about removing penalties for “mutual” obligations he told us that job agencies complained about people “disengaging” when the system was voluntary. This is because it is a sham service that harms people. It will take a long time to build trust with people and get them to access services voluntarily. That is the industry’s fault.
Immediate action
Remove penalties for MOs
Burke said this inquiry exists because he believes the government needs to go back to “first principles” – those are his words. It’s an open admission that what is in place is a catastrophic failure and there’s no excuse for leaving it as is while this inquiry spends a year twiddling its thumbs.
There have been countless parliamentary inquiries that received mountains of evidence about “mutual” obligations, and an inquiry explicitly into employment services that laid bare the deep rot, the extreme harm being caused. And nothing has changed, it’s just been rebranded and a more sinister surveillance system installed.
You say there are processes in place to protect people. Exemptions don’t work and those processes add severe strain to people already in crisis – suffering illness or injury, caring for a loved one, dealing with a death in the family – people can’t afford to go to the doctor to get the paperwork anyway.
The system doesn’t get people out of unemployment so what’s the point in forcing them to engage with it? There is no excuse for not making it voluntary during inquiry.
Changes you must make if “mutual” obligations remain
The providers are the same and the reports we’re receiving are the same. The department says a lot of platitudes but refuses to implement the most basic process improvements we have recommended and refuses to direct the providers to treat people fairly and safely. It’s obscene. You can and should protect people by immediately working with us on the below changes.
Clear directions to providers to address problematic behaviour – this must be public and transparent
Proactive and clear communication to people in the system about their rights – not the kind of wishy washy examples from the department regarding face to face appointments, which ignored every piece of feedback we gave
Provide information to people in the system about how to transfer from a face-to-face provider to online services in Workforce Australia
Complaints and transfer processes should not involve providers and caps must be removed
Providers must not force anyone to attend face-to-face appointments
A ban on provider referrals to related entities – the whole system is just a gravy train for unethical organisations to extract profits from people trying to survive poverty and unemployment
Remove the ability for people to be forced into work
Wage subsidies must be required to ensure ongoing employment
Develop a community engagement model to put unemployed people at the centre of this inquiry and establish an advisory body comprising at least 80% people in employment services to act in an oversight role and hold providers to account
Implement our transition plan to end Work for the Dole
You can and must act now.
A supportive system for the long term
We also shared draft recommendations from the first Antipoverty Centre workshop to prepare submissions for this inquiry from people in the welfare system.
Co-authors of the submission who joined the workshop discussed the question: “If there was a voluntary and supportive system, what would you want it to offer?”
Resume guidance – but actually useful!
Recognition of creative work and contributions I am already making to the community
Encouragement
Guidance accessing supports including for mental health, especially if you can’t afford standard treatments
Help to find the right GP
Support identifying whether or not you actually should be prioritising paid work, or doing something else to care for your health / wellbeing before moving into paid work to put you in a better position to do that
Housing support including ability to create / connect with housing cooperatives
Career counselling, including knowing more about the detail of what is involved in certain jobs so you don’t waste time pursuing a path that is unsuitable
Help to understand and navigate appropriate training and qualifications for work I am interested in and act as a feeder point for local TAFE and uni
Support starting a business
Connections to meaningful volunteering options
Assistance finding basics that are hard to afford on a low income eg whitegoods and furniture
Free makerspaces and tool libraries – or just better libraries that have way more than books
Opportunity to make connections and support to develop worker-controlled cooperatives that fit our work capacity and interests
Help with applications for social security payments, NDIS, etc like Centrelink used to do
Media Contacts
AUWU: Jeremy Poxon (jeremy@auwu.org.au)
Antipoverty Centre: Kristin O’Connell (media@antipovertycentre.org)