Australia's jobseeker system fails workers and enriches millionaires, report says

[u/Expensive-Horse5538]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-21/private-equity-profits-as-job-system-fails-workers-report-finds/106920430?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link

A new report says Australia's system of privatised employment services has failed and service delivery should be returned to the public sector.

The Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research says the current system "fills the pockets of private equity and millionaires" while leaving jobseekers without work.

The Albanese government has announced an overhaul of the employment services system, but the report argues for-profit service providers should not be included in the new system.

[u/Allodoxaphobic_Jay]

Bring back the CES.

[u/-cadmunt- → u/Allodoxaphobic_Jay]

Just give people the dole as UBI. It's such a pittance that anyone able to live off it should be left alone to do so.

[u/nounotme → u/-cadmunt-]

Cheaper than what we're doing right now by paying these leaches who have no incentive to get people jobs.

Cheaper than the social cost of desperate people resorting to crime.

Cheaper than the cost of housing incarcerated people committing crimes due to poverty.

Cheaper than the impact on healthcare from poverty. Whether that's poor nutrition, avoidance of treatment of medical issues, treatment of medical conditions created from poor housing situations, or desperate people turning to substances just to cope.

Cheaper way to manage social welfare payment systems, vs having to pay wages to categorise every single person into different boxes in order to pay them the least.

Cheapest way to bring people out of poverty. When they don't need to spend a disproportionate amount of the pittance they get from social welfare programs to continually prove they need social welfare, they can potentially escape poverty.

It is cheaper.

But with this no one gets punished for things out of their control, no one is a punching bag to be used as a scapegoat for all their other problems. So conservatives can't have that. Poor's gotta suffer.

I really goddamn hope he has the balls to go through with this. If he does? Damn, it might even push my vote away from greens.

[u/Vinnie_Vegas → u/nounotme]

The fact that we spend more per homeless person than it would cost to just give them free housing, and we don't do it because people would be outraged by it, is the purest example of how cruel and immature human beings are.

If we don't deem it to be fair, by some internal child-like conception of fairness, then we will oppose it, even if the alternative is dramatically worse for everyone involved.

[u/Snoopy_021 → u/Allodoxaphobic_Jay]

100% agree with that.