New rules for job-seekers announced last week by Community Services Minister Larry Anthony verge on the petty and vindictive. At present job-seekers are obliged to do between two and eight job interviews a fortnight. Under new rules that will rise to between four and 10. The more remote and fewer jobs there are in an area the fewer interviews have to be done. Mr Anthony hinted that people might be forced to move to places where there is more work — a move that would give rise to charges of hypocrisy given that Mr Anthony’s boss refuses to live where his job is. The unemployed do not have the luxury of moving much of the work to their preferred place of abode, however. Moreover, it is unfair to ask jobless people to move away from family and other support networks, especially for low paid work. It is an outlook that sees people as units of production rather than human beings seeking happiness.
The justification for the new rules appears to be the jobs boom in Sydney. The theory is that no-one serious about looking for work should be unemployed in Sydney. The fact that there are unemployed people in Sydney indicates they are not trying hard enough, so the Government will make they try harder by insisting that they go on more job interviews.
The bizarre thing about the new proposal is that it has put a higher burden on the unemployed in job-scarce regional Australia than on people where there is more work. In job-scarce places the number of job interviews an unemployed person has to do has doubled. In job-rich areas it has gone up just 25 per cent. True, in absolute terms jobless people in both areas have to do two more interviews each, but the increase in percentage shows how silly the Government’s thinking is. Where there are fewer jobs the percentage increase in job interviews goes up more.
It will inevitably lead to a huge number of fruitless interviews. Worse, it will lead to pro-forma interviews where employers sign an interview sheet just to get rid of nagging unemployed people. It will lead to further cynicism and frustration.
On the other hand, the Government’s insistence that unemployed people take whatever work is on offer has merit, provided the pay rate meets prescribed minimums.
There is a more fundamental problem with unemployment. No matter how many real or fake job interviews some people go on, they are going to be unemployable in this globalised economy. We may have to be more realistic and accept that a five per cent unemployment rate is in fact full employment. People with little or no training and with little or no capacity to get it and learn from it are not going to get employed. Most of the unskilled jobs have been taken overseas.
In this environment there should be room to trickle some of the benefits of globalisation down.
The Government has done a fairly good job with its work for the dole scheme, but it now is under threat of losing that good work by being seen to be petty, vindictive and ideologically driven. The most recent changes coming on top of the virtual destruction of any government owned job agency by Employment Services (check) Minister Tony Abbott will be seen as going too far. The Government should accept that any dole system will have to carry small percentage of cheats if it is not to run the risk of excluding many deserving cases.
The real battle against unemployment, meantime, lies elsewhere: in ensuring good economic policy: low inflation, low interest rates, fiscal control, moderate growth. At least some members of the Government have their eye on the main game.