quote:

Failing job sites branded ‘a mess’

The Coalition’s flagship $7.3 billion employment services program has been branded a “hopeless mess” with fewer than 40 per cent of unemployed clients finding long-term work, more than a third of job agencies performing so badly they should be disqualified and warnings that fraud may go undetected.

The Australian has uncovered evidence of job agencies inducing or harassing former clients for pay slips from their new employers to claim taxpayer ­bonuses worth thousands of dollars each.

Agencies are handed incentive payments four weeks after a ­client starts a job and again at three months and cumulatively can get up to $13,750 at six months if the client stays in the job.

Fewer than 40 per cent of ­clients remain employed after six months and almost half of the $1.7bn the department spends on the program each year goes on administration.

An analysis by The Australian of the five-year program ­reveals 569 employment services sites out of 1648 around the nation have failed a measure set by the ­Department of Employment that requires their business be reduced or taken away entirely, but only 12 companies have had their share reduced.

The problem is particularly ­severe in Western Australia, the home state of Employment Minister Michaelia Cash, where just 14 per cent of the 107 employment services sites met the grade for service standards. Only two sites were operating above the national average but the department has “deferred” any shake-up of the private companies “to give providers an opportunity to ­improve their performance”.

The bonuses under the re­designed “jobactive” program launched by the Coalition are big business and, in many cases, ­securing them is the only revenue keeping the organisations afloat.

The Australian understands there are active moves within the Labor Party to reconsider the ­entire employment services model, and while opposition ­employment services spokesman Ed Husic was tight-lipped on the issue in August, he admonished the system in a speech to service providers.

“We spend roughly $9bn on government jobs programs, the second largest area of procurement outside of defence,” he said.

“We have 730,000 people out of work … 40,000 employment services consultants and only 20 per cent of the people helped by the government’s jobs programs find work for more than 26 weeks.”

The Salvation Army lost more than $1 million a month in the first 18 months of the scheme launched in July 2015 because it was not qualifying for the bonus payments it needed to.

David Thompson, the chief executive of Jobs Australia, the peak organisation for non-profit providers, said the system was a “hopeless mess”, not “hugely ­effective” and had been run to the advantage of the largest companies.

“On average, the staff who work at these places have a high-school-level education and a caseload of 150 jobseekers,” he said. “That’s average. Some of them have 300 people they have to see in a week. They do not have a ­relationship with anyone. It’s cheap.”

The jobactive program replaced Job Services Australia, thinning the number of providers and employment regions and ­reducing the amount paid in ­administration costs while boosting performance payments for those businesses that gave jobseekers work.

Peter Kerr from the Australian National Audit Office raised ­concerns with Senator Cash in September when he audited her department’s accounts.

“The accuracy and completeness of the department’s administered expenses is dependent on the effectiveness of the jobactive compliance program, including the integrity of the screening processes designed to reduce ­invalid jobactive claims, random sample checks for the validity of payments and recovery action in respect of invalid payments,” he says in his report.

A July audit of these precise issues raised concerns with the department’s ability to detect ­issues of noncompliance — ­relating to fraud or otherwise — and recommended it “assess whether the current compliance regime is structured to effectively and efficiently detect and manage noncompliance”.

Ms Cash told The Australian that more people “have been ­employed through jobactive than under previous arrangements and at a lower cost to taxpayers”.

“The government is concerned of any reports of misuse of funds and acts on those ­reports. Anyone with anecdotal evidence is welcome to report it to the department, which has ­robust measures in place to prevent and detect noncompliance,’’ she said. “In Western Australia extra time has been given to providers to improve, however, the business reallocation process has ­resumed and is expected to be completed by the end of November.’’

The Department of Employment was unable to provide the audit office with a single example over two years of a time when it used information it had uncovered in routine compliance checks to “target” a provider as part of an investigation or assurance check.

Despite this, it has reason to believe as many as 5000 claims for financial reimbursement from private companies each quarter are invalid.

By last November, almost 18 months since jobactive was launched, the department had investigated only six incidents of noncompliance and had not ­“analysed the reasons for the low number of recorded noncompliance cases”.

The number has since risen to 18 compliance breaches at the end of September.

The department declined to release the names of the companies in the “low-impact breaches” because it said it was “concerned that publishing such information may cause commercial harm to the relevant providers”.

Of the 65 providers contracted to deliver employment support services on behalf of the federal government, the Department of Employment has classified more than 43 per cent of having a risk rating of “extreme or high”.

Of this number, more than half were rated extreme or high due to concerns about their ongoing financial viability, more than one-third due to overall service standards, 28 per cent were deemed compliance risks and ­almost 4 per cent were categorised as being at risk of fraud.

Don Dongington posted:

The RAFFWU just got a lovely Shoppies agreement limiting penalty rates terminated.

loving the SDA like a champ.

Edit: Snype

Anyone working on an OP?

hooman posted:

You'll feel better after a belly scritch.

iajanus posted:

Always pat the belly

Birdstrike posted:

JBP posted:

Time for another classic jbOP I reckon mates.

JBP posted:

Time for another classic jbOP I reckon mates.

JBP posted:

Time for another classic jbOP I reckon mates.

Knobb Manwich posted:

How long until first dog is declared a labor/greens affiliated terror organization and hunted down?

Knobb Manwich posted:

How long until first dog is declared a labor/greens affiliated terror organization and hunted down?

starkebn posted:

They'd be in good company

Knobb Manwich posted:

How long until first dog is declared a labor/greens affiliated terror organization and hunted down?