Labor and the Greens have accused the Morrison government of deliberately avoiding scrutiny of its new welfare compliance regime after an “abysmal” official report excluded data that has been disclosed every three months for a decade.
The jobseeker compliance data report, which was published on Tuesday, has been the subject of a political fight after the government refused to release it for more than six months, including under freedom of information, and instead provided selected statistics to some media outlets.
On Wednesday Labor, the Greens and the Australian Unemployed Workers Union accused the government of hiding data breakdowns that would allow for proper scrutiny of the new framework, which came into effect last July, while non-profit job agencies said the lack of transparency would hamper their efforts to help jobseekers.
“This is a deliberate attempt by the government to stymie any scrutiny about their targeted compliance framework,” said Brendan O’Connor, Labor’s employment services spokesman.
The new compliance regime has faced criticism over an enormous increase in the number of payment suspensions handed to jobseekers, many of which were applied even though welfare recipients were later found not to be at fault.
While the government says the new system has also led to a reduction in docked or cancelled payments, critics say the increased suspensions have had a disproportionate impact on the vulnerable, including the homeless.
The latest report only provides top line figures where past iterations have included breakdowns by welfare payment, age and employment service program.
The Greens senator Rachel Siewert described the report as “abysmal”.
“There have been millions of occasions where payments have been suspended or cancelled and I think it is highly likely that many people were not at fault – but the government won’t release the full picture,” she said.
This month, the government provided a briefing note to a few media outlets with selected figures showing the number of people who had their payments temporarily cut for reasons such as missing a job interview.
The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, said in the subsequent media coverage that the figures showed jobseekers were not taking their obligations seriously. But those figures, included in previous official reports, were not provided in the new report.
Nicole Steers, of Jobs Australia, told Guardian Australia the lack of data was “disappointing” and would impact on the ability of job agencies to get people into work.
“The government sets compliance to mutual obligations to assist people in doing what’s expected of them. And that’s ideally meant to lead to people getting a job,” said Steers, the acting chief executive of the peak body for non-profit employment service providers.
“If the data is so high-level that it doesn’t break down [the penalties] by program, how can we have confidence that the compliance methods applied … are individually successfully achieving that goal?”
The latest official report shows overall welfare payment suspensions among jobseekers increased by 1 million to 2.7 million in the 2018-19 financial year. While 2.7m suspensions were handed out, only 650,ooo “demerit points”, where a person was found to be at fault for missing an appointment or activity, were imposed.
Since a 2010 independent review called on the then-Labor government to release more comprehensive data, the employment department has produced lengthy reports on the welfare penalties regime.
On Tuesday, it said on its website it would now be producing reports every six months, rather than quarterly. While the latest 12-month report is 12 pages long, the 2018 December quarterly report was more than 40 pages long.
Cash’s spokesman said that a “completely different data report needed to be developed” due to changes to the job seeker compliance framework.
There were a limited number of continuing data items since the compliance regime came into effect and they related to different populations, objectives, processes and structures, the spokesman said.
“The targeted compliance framework, for example, introduced a much more expansive range of payment suspension triggers designed to prompt re-engagement, and simpler, fairer, arrangements for determining persistent non-compliance.”
“The department has produced a streamlined report clearly articulating the new targeted compliance framework information.”
