Last modified on Wed 12 May 2021 02.34 EDT
Fewer jobseekers will have face-to-face meetings with employment services providers when the jobactive program is scrapped next year, in a digital overhaul that will cut government spending on employment services by $860.4m.
Despite the pandemic pushing more people into the employment services system, the four-year savings continue the trend of cutting spending in the area, after last year’s budget also banked about $1.4bn.
The budget papers show the flagship jobactive program will be replaced by a so-called “New Employment Services Model” from July 2022 that will allow the “most job-ready jobseekers to manage their job search requirements online”.
Why It’s Time To Cut Through Budget Week Bullshit
The AUWU is organising their own reply to the budget, for those living in and resisting the poverty machine.
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Here we go again, the budget circus is in town.
Anticipation is palpable among members of the political and media class. “Leaks” abound that are usually just recycled stories about old announcements. Professional commentators gear up for their ritual of classifying us into “winners” and “losers”. All of this pageantry, so little consideration of the fact that we’re, you know, actually human beings. No consideration of whether the people hurt by bad social policy have actual
COMPLETELY SPENT
Crikey, in our late-night edition, explaining that:
The Coalition has publicly junked its “small government” furphy with deficits to eclipse $100 billion for the next two years, despite unemployment being expected to fall below 5%, and to exceed $50 billion in 2024-25, “making this the first budget in history designed to buy two elections in a row”
Aged care will receive $17.7 billion over four years, including plans for 80,000 new home care packages, $3.9 billion to meet long-standing demands for staffing ratios in residential care; and $3.2 billion to increase the Government Basic Daily Fee per resident paid to residential providers by $10 a day
Louise Kennerley/AFR
The Morrison government’s new hotline allows employers to report jobseekers for rejecting employment offers, bad behaviour in interviews, missing appointments or voluntarily quitting.
The Scott Morrison Government’s new Employer Reporting Line, labelled the “dobseeker” hotline by critics, allows employers to dob in jobseekers not only for rejecting employment offers but for behaving badly in interviews, missing appointments or voluntarily quitting their job. The scope exceeds what the government foreshadowed in February when it announced a phone number for bosses to report jobseekers who turned down “suitable” job offers. Launched earlier this month, the hotline also allows employers to notify the government if a jobseeker has “demonstrated misconduct or unsuitable behaviour at a job interview”, “submitted an inappropriate job application”, “failed to attend an interview” or “voluntarily left a suitable job”.
‘Kick them to the curb’: Activists demand sacking of sexist ministers
The action also called for the support of women and survivors at work, and their independence at home. Photography by Chloe Breitkreuz.
April 10, 2021
Following recent allegations of sexism and sexual harassment in Parliament, activists gathered at Sydney’s Town Hall on Friday evening to demand the removal of Christian Porter, Linda Reynolds, Andrew Laming and Scott Morrison.
The action, organised by Pride in Protest, Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union (AUWU) Greater Sydney Branch and Women’s March Sydney, also called for the decriminalisation of sex work, an end to precarious work and casualisation, and an increase of JobSeeker to $80 per day.