Labor’s Employment Services Reform must deliver pathways back to work for the 629,500 unemployed Australians

The Coalition supports sensible reform to employment services, but today’s announcement from Minister Rishworth is also an acknowledgment that unemployment is rising under Labor and the current system is not delivering for Australians looking for work. Minister Rishworth stood at the National Press Club today and called this "the biggest reform in 30 years" a mere week after unemployment rose to 4.5 per cent, with 692,500 Australians now out of work. That is not a coincidence worth ignoring. It is the context in which the Albanese Government's employment services record must be judged. More than 140,600 additional Australians out of work compared to when the Coalition left office. Youth unemployment is now double the national rate and it was women who bore the brunt of Labor’s weakening economy in the most recent Labour Force data. These are not abstract statistics. They are Australians who either lost work or cannot find work in the month the Government chose to announce its reform. The Coalition welcomes Minister Rishworth's belated recognition that Australia's employment services system needs reform. A more targeted approach that involves matching the level of support to the distance a jobseeker is from the labour market is a sensible direction. The Coalition understands that the needs of someone who has recently lost their job, a person building skills and confidence, and someone facing complex long-term barriers to employment are genuinely different. Splitting the system into three streams is a sensible structural change. But the Coalition has a serious concern about what this reform signals for mutual obligations, particularly for Australians who have been on JobSeeker for extended periods. The Coalition would be deeply concerned by any systematic weakening of participation requirements for the long-term unemployed or a world where the long-term unemployed are put in the “too hard basket” without a path to experiencing the dignity of work. Mutual obligations are the framework that maintains a meaningful connection between receiving income support and actively engaging with their own pathway back to work. Decades of Australian and international evidence shows that structured participation produces better long-term employment outcomes than passive support. The Minister was today unable to answer basic questions about how participants in the various streams will progress and how success will be measured. We will be following these matters up at Senate Estimates next week and expect the Department to come with answers. The Coalition knows that a Press Club Address does not create jobs. A growing and productive economy with a thriving private sector does. Small businesses are looking at leaving our shores because of Labor's budget of toxic taxes and a business that shuts its doors employs no one. Labor's high taxing agenda is a recipe for fewer jobs and less opportunity. The Coalition is delivering policies that will improve Australians’ living standards and drive economic growth, including our Tax Back Guarantee and scrapping Labor’s economy-wide taxes.