Chapter:
11 - Employment
Mover:
Jonathan Stallard
Seconder:
Hannah Smith
 
 
Source:
Union: CPSU
My Private Notes


Preamble
​The Rebuilding Employment Services Report is an important milestone to end the privatisation of employment services and build a modern-day Commonwealth Employment Service. 
Privatisation has failed, and the Commonwealth public sector must be put back at the heart of employment services. The current system is not fit-for-purpose, and is failing employers, jobseekers and taxpayers. 
Disappointingly the report falls short in failing to recommend the abolition of mutual obligations, which is the ineffective and punitive compliance framework that underpins the current model. The recommended reforms in the report are positive, but a true departure from the current punitive system will require further significant work from the government. 
Renationalising employment services would rebuild capacity and capability within the APS, it would allow the Commonwealth to play a direct role in shaping labour market changes and responding to immediate and future policy challenges and economic priorities, and it would rewrite the relationship between government and job seekers, which is hugely overdue.
General Resolution

Employment Services – back in public hands

​This Conference welcome the recommendations from the Rebuilding Employment Services Report to: 
• Establish a large Commonwealth public sector provider – Employment Services Australia 
• Creation of a watchdog – an Employment Services Quality Commission 
• Reform to the punitive mutual obligations system, with individual tailoring of plans and returning breach powers to the public service in Services Australia. This would include ending automated payment suspensions, and ensuring people have access to a human decision maker before their payments are suspended. 
• Increasing regional services, with the public service working alongside localised specialist services 
• For the Australian Government to develop and publish a transition plan for the rebuilt Commonwealth Employment Services System by the end of 2024. 
This Conference calls on the federal Labor Government to respond to the Report, almost six months since its release.   
This Conference calls on the federal Labor Government to permanently suspend mutual obligations and work towards bringing employment services system back as a public service. 
This Conference recommends that the federal Labor Government work with unions, civil society groups and employers to develop a new public employment services model that is not punitive and genuinely improves employment outcomes.