Employment services are failing on all fronts and need comprehensive reform, ACOSS said today following the release of a further damning report by the Commonwealth Ombudsman on the Targeted Compliance Framework.
The report found that private employment service providers are making large-scale errors in recommending people be eligible for harsh financial penalties, with over half of those recommendations later overturned.
The Ombudsman also found providers are not meeting requirements to record proper information about a person's full circumstances, leading to wrongful cancellation and suspension decisions.
"This report demonstrates widespread harmful action against low income people and complete lack of oversight of private providers, alongside the thousands of illegal payment cancellations already identified. In a system which hands employment service providers $1.2bn a year, the lack of robust independent oversight is unacceptable," said ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie.
This is the second Ombudsman report this year, after ACOSS made an official complaint in December last year, due to the widespread concerns about the damaging impacts of employment services and the Targeted Compliance Framework, and the Government illegally canceling 964 people's vital income support payments.
The Ombudsman has now found that the Government's approach to remediating people impacted by unlawful cancellation decisions is not fair or reasonable.
The broken Targeted Compliance Framework continues to inflict large scale harm on people receiving income support, with 1 million payment suspensions issued over the last year alone. Over half of First Nations people with an employment services provider had a payment suspension in the most recent quarter.
"Australia's employment services system is failing to get people into decent paid work, and causing large scale harm through pointless activities and harsh penalties," said Dr Goldie.
"The Targeted Compliance Framework must be removed immediately, to stop the large-scale harm against people on low incomes using these services. More fundamentally, the Government needs to rethink its whole approach to mutual obligation.
"Employment services need bold and ambitious reform in this term of government – investing in effective programs that support people into paid work, removing harmful compliance and establishing robust quality standards."
