Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Could I start by congratulating Senator Arbib on his elevation to the Employment Participation portfolio. He is, quite clearly, across the elements of his portfolio and is more than capable of answering the questions that he was asked today.

There is a difference between not liking the answers that you get and whether or not you accept that on this side of the chamber, under a Rudd Labor government, you have a party of reform and on the other side of the chamber you have a party of people who want to keep rolling over contracts without any accountability or any examination of whether or not those contracts have been effective. We went to the last election with a policy to reform Job Network. That is what we did in 2007. We went on the campaign trail saying that we would reform the Job Network provisions and capacity in this country. You see, the Howard government left us with a Job Network that was out of date, one size fits all, bogged down in red tape and incapable of dealing with Australia’s chronic skills shortages. They took the politically easy decision to simply roll over 95 per cent of businesses in the last Job Network tender. In 2006, when the Job Network became available again for retendering, it was not put out to tender. Ninety-five per cent of the businesses in the contracts were not put out to tender. There was no scrutiny under the Howard government. They simply lay down, rolled over and continued with the incompetent and inept system that was in place. There were no improvements and no accountability. They simply rolled over the existing contracts in 2006 for 95 per cent of businesses.

Throughout 2008, under Minister Brendan O’Connor, we embarked on a wide program of consultation with the employment service providers, employers, job seekers and community groups to actually hear their views about how to improve Job Network, now Job Services Australia. We fulfilled our promise by announcing that we will now have Job Services Australia and not Job Network. What is this going to do? One of the fundamental issues that the people opposite have failed to grasp is that the government’s new employment services will actually integrate seven programs. It will integrate Job Network, JSP, JPET, Green Corps, Work for the Dole, Harvest Labour Services and the NEIS. What we are being asked for is a different service to be provided now. That is why it went out to tender. We now have a service that will be tailored for each job seeker. We will be scrapping waiting periods for services for more job seekers. We will promote the value of real training that leads to job opportunities—unlike the previous government. They did not want to link any training to job outcomes and job seeker provisions. Our program will cut red tape for providers, freeing them up to help job seekers; retain and expand access to specialist services for highly disadvantaged job seekers; and be uncapped and demand driven. This is unlike the system we inherited, which had a waiting list of over 20,000 for the Personal Support Program.

What we have seen is a government of reform—a government that went out there last year and actually consulted right around the country about a new program of job services provision for those who are seeking employment. You may well ask, ‘What about those who did not get the tender? What about those who might have missed out?’ Quite simply, tenderers who missed out can request a debriefing. That is an opportunity that has been provided to them. They can contact the Employment Services Purchasing Hotline and get a debriefing. We know that tenderers were required by the process to nominate areas they wished to work in, and they were measured against each other on an area-by-area basis. It was a competitive tendering process. It may well be that they might have been excellent in one area but not in the other six. Remember: this is a reform, a change program, a program for the better. This is where we are rolling up seven programs into one. Just because you were good at one did not mean that you were going to be good in all of them. What we had was an open, competitive tendering process, at arm’s length from the government, that will now deliver for this country integrated and responsive job services.