The CPSU has labelled Australia's employment services system a complete failure, after new figures revealed a system that is delivering worse outcomes year after year.
According to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations' annual report, only 11.7% of jobseekers secured long-term work last year, while billions of taxpayer dollars were funnelled into private providers.
The current employment services system is projected to cost taxpayers $8.2 billion over the next 4 years, and is dominated by only a handful of providers owned by multinational companies.
These providers have been caught engaging in unethical behaviour, gouging as much money as they can from their already highly lucrative government contracts. Whistleblowers have revealed that providers are falsely claiming credit for jobseekers who have secured themselves a job, enabling them to claim taxpayer dollars for doing absolutely nothing. And media reports have uncovered that more than $40 million a year is being pocketed by providers for shuffling jobseekers through jobs and training programs within their own companies.
This is not value for money, and it is not delivering for Australians who need real support to find secure employment.
A modern and fit for purpose Commonwealth Employment Service would provide real pathways to employment, support local communities and businesses, and restore integrity to a system that has well and truly lost its way.
Quotes attributable to Melissa Donnelly, CPSU National Secretary:
"Privatisation has turned employment services into a tick-a-box profit-driven industry that rewards providers for keeping people in a cycle of unemployment, and these numbers are proof of that.
"An 11.7 per cent success rate isn't success at all - it's failure. Failure to support jobseekers, failure to meet workforce demands, and failure to provide value for money.
"Australians deserve better than a system that punishes jobseekers while lining the pockets of multinational corporations. It's time to end this failed experiment and bring back the CES."
6 November 2025
