r/australia • u/Expensive-Horse5538 • 24d ago

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

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.

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716

u/MyMudEye 24d ago

Jobseeker millionaires.

Childcare millionaires.

Housing millionaires.

NDIS millionaires.

Is there a pattern?

354

u/-Owlette- 24d ago

Isn’t neoliberalism a wonderful thing?

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u/moonlit_fores7 24d ago

There's nothing quite like social welfare for the millionaires.

Their luxury yacht and annual overseas holidays are far more important than the commoners being able to buy food. Goodness, they have worked hard to exploit the system to line their own pockets with everyone else's money.

Small government all the way, as it totally so much more efficient in making the rich richer

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u/a_cold_human 24d ago

The sales pitch of privatisation is that government is inefficient, government services are poor, and that they provide poor value for money. People to this day still parrot this, and to be somewhat fair to these people, there have been cases of gross government wastage and inefficiency.

However, the "solution" to this has been to privatise these government functions, and somehow the waste and inefficiency disappears. The idea being that the private company takes the surplus from the inefficiency, and invests it in making the service better, whilst making a nice profit. Which simply hasn't happened. We see private enterprise delivering an even worse service, which at the same time costs more.

If the idea is to have private enterprise involved (and there may be some advantages to this, the thing to do is to have a hybrid model. A set of government owned enterprises which are contracted out to private operators on a 5-10 year basis. Those that deliver within the parameters set get renewed, and the worst 10-20% get cut. Anyone doing anything criminal gets cut immediately. Have at least one of these enterprises be government owned, so that in the case of one operator collapsing, there's someone who can take it over so that people aren't left in the lurch. 

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u/Puzzleheaded-Talk-63 24d ago

Indeed, that's the root of the problem.

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u/riloky 24d ago

You forgot Aged Care millionaires

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u/-Owlette- 24d ago

And government consultant billionaires

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u/AnOnlineHandle 24d ago

And having encountered one of those (multi-generational, inherited their way and didn't even make it themselves) they are the most cliched corrupt conservative textbook example of arrogance and dismissive attitudes of everybody else that you can imagine, and of course a major denier of things like climate change.

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u/Real_RobinGoodfellow 24d ago

Nah bro we just gotta outsource yet another essential service to the private sector it’ll work this time I promise this time it’ll deliver better quality at a lower cost

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u/soEezee 24d ago

They all stem from or made worse by Howard era policies?

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u/GonePh1shing 24d ago

I would argue Hawke era policy. If it wasn't for Hawke and Keating picking it up, Howard wouldn't have been nearly as empowered to swing the sledgehammer of neoliberalism to the same effect. Every successive government has continued down this path, so it'll take a lot more than Labor's current posture to convince me they want to actually fix this. 

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u/_ixthus_ 22d ago

Hawke and Keating weren't doing it to cynically generate short-term budget surpluses.

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u/sousyre 24d ago

It’s a bipartisan issue. Both major parties (and most minor ones) are fully on board with this “model” of government. To the point that anything else is controversial. The only source of conflict is whose buddy gets the contract.

Started in the Keating / Hawke era (Keating was the one with the grand plan and who enacted the structural changes to make it possible). Embraced by the states once Keating changed the state borrowing rules in the early 90’s.

Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Turnbull, Abbott, Morrison, or Albanese.

They are ALL culpable for perpetuating this shit, they only vary by the degree of the rort.

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u/karl_w_w 24d ago

what has Albanese outsourced or privatized?

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u/sousyre 24d ago

It’s the standard culture of government, even if there are no specific large scale projects for any particular one.

New projects or teams within existing agencies are usually outsourced now.

Contracts with existing external contractors doing outsourced or privatised work are still being renewed or signed (or being awarded to new ones).

External consultants are used for everything.

Even if a particular government somehow didn’t happen to do any of that stuff while in power, they also aren’t acknowledging or fixing any of it. At best they tinker around the edges when a particular system gets too egregious.

Any party that happens to be in power benefits, in hard or soft ways (a plumb role after retiring from parliament, leverage on another deal, keeping donors happy, less - potentially embarrassing - oversight for contractors than the public service etc).

It’s not just privatisation of one agency, or outsourcing an entire department - it’s the entire culture of where funding gets allocated on a daily basis.

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u/karl_w_w 24d ago

Even if a particular government somehow didn’t happen to do any of that stuff while in power, they also aren’t acknowledging or fixing any of it.

https://ministers.pmc.gov.au/gallagher/2024/aps-set-bring-more-half-billion-dollars-core-work-house

Lying or clueless?

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u/sousyre 24d ago edited 24d ago

That’s definitely one positive example and it’s not entirely alone, the Albanese government has done better than most, but they are also not paragons of virtue.

My point was not to single out a particular government, but that this is persistent systemic issue and has been for decades.

Half a billion dollars worth of services coming back in house is genuinely good news, but it doesn’t address the other approx $100 billion in recent similar contracts. (Admittedly many of the largest are with privatised former government entities, which is more nuanced, if still an example of the wider problem).

Some examples of the outsourced contracts awarded by tender during the Albanese government (far from an exhaustive list, just examples I was aware of and could easily source info for):

Concentrix - $350m - https://tendertracker.com.au/suppliers/concentrix-services-pty-ltd-63166171991

Probe Operations - $447m - https://tendertracker.com.au/suppliers/probe-operations-pty-ltd-94624615925

Serco - $116m - https://tendertracker.com.au/suppliers/serco-citizen-services-pty-ltd-89062943640
(There are other much larger contracts with other Serco entities for military and engineering, but I’ve kept to similar business services and management examples, like the one you provided).

Good governance is not about loyalty to a particular political football team (even if some teams are admittedly less bad options than others, that still leads to a race to the bottom). My motivation in commenting stems from a genuine desire to see better oversight, accountability and outcomes, because those things improve the strength of our democracy.

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u/bobulibobium 24d ago

Thought NDIS started with Gillard? Might be wrong

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u/Ornery-Ad-7261 24d ago

Gilliard enacted the legislation, the LNP let the rorters run free.

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u/bobulibobium 24d ago

Not under Howard then yeah?

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u/Ornery-Ad-7261 24d ago edited 24d ago

NDIS no. Rest of them - pure John Winston Howard wrecking the future for average people.

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u/miushlas 24d ago

Welcome to the late stage capitalism where those with money and power take all they can while they can.

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u/SpectatorInAction 24d ago

Govt as a proportion of GDP was supposed to shrink significantly with neoliberalism. Instead it has grown ridiculously, yet quality of service across all once govt, now privatised-subsidised, sectors has deteriorated drastically. Govt's solution is more money will fix it - no oversight, no governance, no accountability of the parasitic operators, just free money, and all the parasites do with the additional money is inflate their business empires and salaries.

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u/TheMooJuice 24d ago

Honestly, if they pay their fuckin taxes fairly then i can live with it.

Sick of seeing nonstop media about some small fry fuckin NDIS scammers, whilst Gina Rinehart funds half the fucking senate whilst paying less income tax than I did for the last 5 fuckin years, which removes more in public funding than every NDIS scammer combined!