Employment

Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston—Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) (14:12): I'd like to thank the member for Boothby for that question but also for the absolutely huge contribution she's made to reforming employment services. Under this Labor government, we've seen the lowest average unemployment rate of any government in the last 50 years. We've seen the creation of more than 1.2 million jobs, and, in the past 12 months, we've seen more than 128,000 more Australians in work. But, unfortunately, there are still too many Australians missing out on the benefits of work, because for decades our employment services system has treated everyone the same regardless of their skills and experience or the barriers to work that they face. Around one in five Workforce Australia participants have been in employment services for five years or more, almost double the number of a decade ago. We must change the system to provide more targeted support and better calibrate employment services that help Australians into jobs.

So today I announce that our government is embarking on the largest reforms of our employment service system in 30 years—reforms that will help jobseekers get the right support at the right time and reforms that will deliver improved value for money by directing resources to where they are needed the most. Of course, these reforms build on the very important work done by the member for Bruce as Chair of the Select Committee on Workforce Australia Employment Services, and I'd like to recognise all the members of that committee for their very substantial report.

The system overhaul that we are performing will be centred around four main changes. The first and most important change is that we are ending the 'one size fits all' approach to servicing. We are creating three distinct, high-quality service streams offering different intensity of support depending on an individual's distance from the labour market. The second change is the introduction of effective mutual obligations that are designed to actually help people get a suitable job and that are calibrated to a person's distance from the labour market. Third, we are overhauling the assessment and triaging process so barriers to employment are identified early. And, fourth, we are introducing a new planning process which supports people to develop employment goals and work towards them. Our government has committed in this budget $312 million as a down payment to establish the key new elements of this system because every person in our employment services system, no matter how far they are from the labour market, deserves a clear pathway to employment.