It is unacceptable that 3,000 people on welfare turned down offers of employment last year, Christian Porter has said.
The social services minister said he did not believe there was a shortage of jobs in Australia, because the care sector was having trouble filling vacancies and would create another 115,000 jobs over the next few years.
Speaking at the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss) national conference in Sydney, Porter said too many people were avoiding penalties for failing to accept legitimate job offers, or failing to look for work.
He said people on unemployment benefits should not have the view that some jobs were better than others.
“There is a sense in Australia that one job is superior to another job, or that one job is a better fit than another job,” he said.
“There is a very deep reason why jobs are a better outcome than alternatives ... but having a situation persist in Australia where you have high youth unemployment and an inability to recruit young people into retail or tourism or care jobs, I don’t think is a sustainable position for this country.”
Australian Bureau of Statistics data this week showed the unemployment rate remained steady last month, at 5.6%, but the shift away from full-time employment towards part-time employment has continued unabated.
The number of Australians in full-time employment has fallen by 69,900 since December, while part-time employment has increased by 132,700, with its share of overall employment increasing from 31.1% to 32%.
The underemployment ratio – a measure of the number of workers who would like to work longer hours – has risen from 8.9% to 9.2% since November 2015.
Data showed there were just 175,300 job vacancies in Australia in August, an increase of 1.3% since May. And wages are growing at their slowest rate on record.
Acoss released a report last month showing an increase in poverty, with an estimated 2.9 million people – 13.3% of the population – now living below the internationally accepted poverty line.
Porter was asked by an audience member how the government could justify not raising income support payments for people living in poverty when it was clear there were not enough jobs to support them.
Porter said he did not believe there were not enough jobs, because the care sector was having trouble filling vacancies.
He said the bigger problem was trying to encourage welfare recipients back into work – such as those who still received carer payments, even though their caring relationship had ended.
“The best possible estimates of employment growth show that in one area, which is care – disability care, aged care, childcare – there’s going to be 115,000 jobs created over the next several years,” he said.
“Yet at precisely the same time that those jobs are being created, and there is a workforce shortfall in that area, we are having deep problems transitioning people who have ended a care relationship, and are on a carer payment, into employment.
“So I just don’t put my hands up and say there aren’t enough jobs. I just don’t think that that’s statistically the case. And government and all of the sectors represented here have to do better at transitioning,” he said.
His comments sent a murmur through the audience.
Later, Porter repeated the observation that there were 3,000 people on welfare last year who turned down genuine offers of employment.
He said the central mutual obligation for a job seeker was to look for employment, and it was a “big concern” that large numbers of people were failing to meet that requirement.
