Ms KERNOT (4:08 PM) —by leave—Labor welcomes this statement; but, when you analyse it, it takes 10 minutes of rhetoric and the usual baseless attack on the opposition to make two essential points. Those two essential points are contained in just one paragraph of the minister's statement. The first point is the OECED—isn't that one of those awful overseas bodies, Minister?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—You will address your remarks through the chair.

Ms KERNOT —Sorry. Mr Deputy Speaker, I refer the minister to the government's attitude to the monitoring of its own processes by any overseas body. I simply point that out to the minister. The minister says that the OECD has agreed to conduct a full study of the Job Network and Australia's other employment services and labour market arrangements, that the government is releasing performance data for employment services over the past 12 months and that this data will now be released every quarter. The minister says that the rationale for this is to boost public confidence in the Job Network and to dispel unjustifiable suspicion that the government might be seeking to avoid scrutiny. Methinks the minister doth protest far too much. After all, it is this minister who is constantly providing the parliament with departmental run surveys, supposedly attesting to public confidence in the Job Network.

It is just recently that both ACOSS and the Labor Party are on record as saying that there is woefully inadequate scrutiny of the Job Network to date. I have recently announced that I would be introducing a private member's bill setting up an independent monitoring authority. I do not, immodestly, suggest that this has prompted the minister to take some action but we do know from emerging evidence, particularly released this week, on the IT outsourcing fiasco and others, that where government services are privatised, where they are contracted out, there always need to be very careful safeguards in place. I have said many times that Labor will be keeping the Job Network because we have a responsible attitude to those who have valid contracts in place till the year 2003. We are not going to put at risk the work and the money that they have invested. We have said that many times. But that does not mean that we should not have a role to play in pointing out the defects in the system.

In continued pursuit of his `my system is better than your system' mentality which characterises so many of the minister's statements, the minister insists on reasserting that the Job Network is outperforming the old CES by 50 per cent. If I do not answer this, the minister will go away from this chamber and again reassert what I believe to be quite dodgy analysis. So I will say yet again that this is misleading, that this figure is based on the CES after the new coalition government had started to cut back its staff and wind down its operations. If you look at the performance and you discount it to take into account the differing measurements of what constituted a job—how that was measured—and if you produce a like-for-like comparison, then the Job Network is in fact only performing at three-quarters the rate of the CES when it was operating at its normal capacity. But the first point is, however, that the Howard government has been running employment services for 4½ years. So what is appropriate to discuss now is how the Job Network—which is a radical experiment—operates, where it has deficiencies and how those deficiencies can be remedied. Secondly, one of the strengths of the Job Network is that it is staffed at management levels by many of the very good and experienced people who ran the CES, who ran Skillshare and who ran Employment National. They have taken their corporate memory and their corporate skills with them.

One of the problems specifically raised by the minister in his statement was data problems. I argue that this is not something peculiar to the CES. I recently held a forum in South Australia for a number of major Job Network providers. I was told at this forum, as I have been told at many previous forums, that a major deficiency in the current operation of the Job Network was that Centrelink fails to update data about the status of clients referred to job matching. Providers tell me that they often get between 40 per cent and 80 per cent of inappropriate referrals. These are people who have already moved or they have already got a job or they should have been referred to another type of program, such as intensive assistance or community support. Job providers are very sensitive to the fact that Centrelink is underresourced. They do not wish to be overly critical, but the fact of the matter is that, when the system goes wrong at step 1 and people are inappropriately referred, that actually impacts on the whole Job Network system, and when you add to that the fact that it costs $500 to have somebody who has been referred reclassified, then that does have an impact on the running of the network by the providers. I think that is a legitimate criticism to make. While the minister can give me heaps of anecdotal evidence from the past, I could match you and raise you one, Minister, if that is the way you want to do it with current anecdotal examples. The point is: why don't we just make the system work better rather than engage in this contest?

The minister also lists new planned evaluations. The fact is that what the minister is talking about, with the exception of the planned OECD evaluation, is more evaluations done by his department. This is the same department that helped to design and implement the system and the same department that is still sitting in judgment of that system. This is the same department that has been asked to provide the minister with the dodgy statistics that he keeps using on the performance of the network compared with the CES. It is no wonder the minister says he wants to improve public confidence in scrutiny of the network. But I would put to him that public scrutiny is not just about doing the studies; it is about independent monitoring and scrutiny. I sincerely hope that the OECD will talk to the job seekers who use the system as well as the employers and the job providers. If the OECD were to speak to me I would tell them that the Job Network is a radical experiment. It is worth $1 billion a year and it should have had independent monitoring from the very beginning.

Minister Abbott also implies that the opposition has been making cheap shots at decent organisations. I reject that implication. Labor has not been doing that. We have raised, and we will continue to raise, legitimate concerns about the defects of the system. This is a fundamental part of the democratic process. But what we have always done is make a distinction between the design of the Job Network, which is the government's design, and those who are implementing that design. We have said that many of the providers do great work. Our gripe is not with them. Our problem is with the design flaws that the government has built in, deliberately or otherwise. It is a work in progress. The minister said so himself.

So with respect to the charitable sector we have made justifiable comments about Job Network providers being careful of unwittingly becoming third party endorsers. They did not design the system. They are doing their best to implement it. The system has some deficiencies. Minister Abbott said that he believes that the opposition should commit itself unambiguously to the Job Network. Just yesterday the minister was telling us we were going to abolish Work for the Dole and the Job Network. Now he says: `If you are going to keep it, tell us exactly how you are going to improve it.' The minister knows, as do the providers we have spoken to, that we have a lot of constructive ideas. We have put them on the record. We have said, for example, that one of Job Network's strengths is the diversity that it offers. Many job seekers tell us that in that diversity they can usually find someone with whom they have rapport. But we have also said that it is unacceptable that in round 1 of the Job Network only 50 per cent of the long-term unemployed received intensive assistance. This was a design of the system. This was a 50 per cent contracted capacity. That is an element of design. By way of contrast, under Labor's system all of those who had been unemployed over 18 months had access.

Mr Abbott —That is wrong.

Ms KERNOT —No, that is not wrong, Minister. They received help. That is 100 per cent compared with 50 per cent. So what should be the purpose of employment services? It should be to improve the employability prospects of those job seekers who need intensive assistance, not just half of them.

Finally, Minister Abbott trumpets what he calls the `paradigm shift' that the Job Network represents. This is an overstated position. Labor pioneered case management for the long-term unemployed through community organisations back in 1994. Labor believes that the use of contract case management is effective, especially when backed up with training and work placement. As we can see from the evaluation of the Job Network so far, its performance is less effective when this training does not occur.

So Labor does not have an ideological problem with government partnerships with private and non-government organisations. But it does have a problem when a government requires these external agencies through their contracts with it to make breach recommendations that result in the loss of income for job seekers, especially when this government has a quota in place on this practice. Labor agrees with the McClure report when it says that financial penalties—and that is what this government relies on as a centrepiece of its welfare-to-work policy—should be sanctions of the last resort.

The minister also talks about `a moral market'. I simply ask: where is the moral market where breaches are made to fill a quota, often with little or no investigation of the individual circumstances concerned? Labor also supports the policy principle of governments providing an enabling hand, providing capital, reviewing performance. We are all aware of the work of social entrepreneurs done in Britain and elsewhere. I believe they play an important role in the regeneration of communities, but I think it is still a little too narrow to suggest that the Job Network is the most important vehicle for delivering this. There are many other examples of dynamic partnerships achieving community regeneration. There are many dynamic partnerships between schools and churches and health organisations, for example, or between state governments and local governments in a public-public partnership. Where we agree, Minister, is that everyone who can work should do so. But to take up many of the jobs that are still available requires training. The real partnerships are between governments and the unemployed and employers to get people into work. Labor would also like to see the Job Network used as a vehicle for social entrepreneurs. We have already identified that as a possible future option. But it is hard to see how the current Job Network can become such a vehicle when it is focused largely on a private business model.

Turning to the terms of reference, I notice that in the last term of reference the minister has had two bob each way. He says that the OECD will examine the evidence available on the operations and performance of the Job Network. I wonder if this is all the massive available evidence compiled by the department or if there is something else besides that. He goes on to say at the very end:

So there is the minister's out. We are going to have this review but at the end of it we should always note that it is based on evidence available from his department and that with the opt-out clause it may be still too early to draw any firm conclusions. That is the insurance policy in case the OECD does not actually end up in glorified praise of the Job Network.

In conclusion, Labor does understand, with respect to service delivery, that an entirely different relationship between government and non-government organisations and citizens is evolving. We understand that. We have discussed that before. We intend to play a constructive role in government in that new partnership. But for Labor, being an enabling government also means being one that does not abdicate its administrative responsibilities and its requirements for transparency and accountability. For us, it is not about just value for taxpayers' money: it is about accountability for taxpayers' money and accountability to job seekers and their various needs.