The legality of the system designed to penalise jobseekers has been thrown into doubt after the commonwealth ombudsman found a government department\u2019s automatic system unlawfully cancelled payments.<\/p>\n
The ombudsman has found 964 jobseekers had their payments unlawfully cancelled between April 2022 and July 2024 by the automated IT system that underpins the targeted compliance framework (TCF) system.<\/p>\n
TCF is designed to make sure jobseekers meet requirements such as attending meetings with an employment provider and applying for jobs to continue to receive their payments.<\/p>\n
Payment cancellations have been paused since January after the government found a further 1,326 people had financial penalties \u201capplied incorrectly\u201d due to an IT issue.<\/p>\n
On top of this, 45 people had their payments illegally cancelled because the system continued to operate in error.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the ombudsman found the payments had been cancelled unlawfully and recommended the government continue to pause cancellations until the it could review the legality of the entire TCF system.<\/p>\n
The ombudsman, Iain Anderson, said he investigated cancellations where public servants working at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations had failed to consider individual circumstances before cancelling a payment as laid down by law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were just automating the cancellation without considering the individual circumstances of the jobseeker and whether it was appropriate to cancel the payment or not,\u201d he told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe target compliance framework itself has been very problematic in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson said that in 2022 DEWR was also meant to put in a \u201cdigital protection framework\u201d to ensure jobseekers were treated fairly, but the department had failed to do so.<\/p>\n
Anderson said the secretary of DEWR, Natalie Jones, needed to be \u201ccompletely confident\u201d the system was working properly before the cancellations resume.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe targeted compliance framework has had a number of different problems, and so the secretary of DEWR needs to do much more than simply look at the unlawful cancellation issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need to be really certain that the entire target compliance framework is going to comply with the law and be fair.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said there were also concerns as to whether the suspension of payments, which happens in tens of thousands of cases each month, was legal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some concerns as to whether the suspension process is happening fairly and reasonably,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On top of this, Guardian Australia understands a Deloitte report into the IT system that underpins the TCF has found that it is not functioning within the proper legal frameworks.<\/p>\n
The Deloitte report \u2013 which has yet to be published \u2013 recommends overhauling the TCF\u2019s IT system to ensure that the suspension or cancellation of payments is done legally.<\/p>\n
The Greens have called for the government to abolish the TCF and release the report.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is clear that the TCF is an expensive hangover from a conservative government which has been heartlessly prolonged by this Labor government for far too long,\u201d senator Penny Allman-Payne said.<\/p>\n
The DEWR is also conducting a legal review to examine the way decisions are being made under the legislation.<\/p>\n
The Ombudsman will continue to investigate the TCF with another report due out later in the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The legality of the system designed to penalise jobseekers has been thrown into doubt after the commonwealth ombudsman…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":121775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-121774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114978037857826837","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}