Saving the long term jobless

If they can get the new Labor Government to accept that the “hard cases” that remain on their books should not be expected to work (or that they need long periods of “support” before they should be required to look for jobs), they will be able to keep the government money flowing while returning to their softer, more traditional welfare function. In this way, they hope they can have their cake and keep eating it.

There may well be a case for re-examining how payments are made to Job Network agencies. Before it lost office in the 2007 federal election, the Howard government signalled its intention to do this at the 2009 contract round, and the Rudd government has already indicated its support for adjusting interim fees to improve rewards for those dealing with the hardest cases. There may also be some scope for rewarding Job Network agencies that put additional time and resources into developing the “job readiness” of long-term unemployed people, although not everything the welfare charities do should necessarily be funded by Canberra.

But whatever reforms are introduced, it is vital that the core “work priority” principle that has come to underpin welfare policy in this country is not weakened or abandoned. When jobless people who are capable of working approach Centrelink and the Job Network for help, the first priority must remain finding them employment. Even if they only secure a short-term job, this is better than staying on welfare and undertaking job-readiness training, for the best preparation for work is work. The current campaign by sections of the welfare lobby to weaken or scrap altogether the emphasis on placing claimants into jobs aims to decouple welfare provision from the expectation of work requirements. This must not be allowed to happen.

Of course, the Job Network agencies are right when they tell us it’s not easy to get unskilled, long-term jobless people into work. They may also be right when they complain that their job has become harder as the unemployment figures have fallen. But the Job Network system has evolved and changed significantly over the last ten years, and it can change some more. It should be possible to amend the system of payments so that agencies that achieve successful job placements for hard-to-employ people get better rewarded in the future than they do now. But this does not justify moving away from the work first principle. We have made real progress in the last ten years. It would be a tragedy if we were to throw it all away now.