Remote jobseekers will soon be able to claim hours spent on drug and alcohol rehabilitation or school drop offs as part of their work for the dole requirements, in an overhaul of bush unemployment services.
From 1 July, remote jobseekers between the ages of 18 and 49 will have to engage in 25 hours of work for the dole over five days in a week in order to qualify for welfare payments under the remote jobs and communities program (RJCP).
But non-work activities such as keeping medical appointments, attending rehab, dropping children off to school and even applying for jobs will be counted in the 25-hour requirement.
A spokeswoman for Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion said it including drop offs in the work requirements would boost school attendance.
“It’s important [that] parents of school age children do everything they can to get their children to school. Making it part of their work for dole activity will help reinforce school attendance as a ‘social norm’,” she said.
“It will also mean parents are able to take part in other activities without concern for their children’s safety. Children in school are generally safer than when they are not.”
The spokeswoman said that listing rehabilitation as an approved activity was “entirely appropriate” as it helped unemployed people prepare for work.
The new RJCP also requires remote jobseekers to engage in work for the dole for 52 weeks a year, twice as long as jobseekers in urban areas.
Regional employment services were told of the changes during a forum in Alice Springs late last month. Officials from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet handed service operators a 300-page document detailing their new contractual obligations.
“We’ve been given a substantially different contract, one that’s been driven by Canberra [bureaucrats],” Matthew Ellem, general manager of Alice Springs employment agency Tangentyere said.
The agencies at the forum had signed five-year contracts under the old RJCP. They expressed concern about the fast timeframe for the changes, which will begin to be rolled out in less than 12 weeks, and the unrealistic expectations placed on services in delivering the program.
“There was widespread concern from all the providers in the room,” forum attendee Jane Weepers said. “There’s nothing in the scheme that’s going to increase [long-term] employment.”
“It was a completely top-down approach. The things that did work [under the old scheme] were completely abandoned,” she said.
Agencies must put forward activities for the work for the dole program for the department to consider. They must also assume responsibility for ferrying clients from one activity to another.
Despite its size, Ellem told Guardian Australia that he is concerned about the lack of detail in the 300-page contract. Specifically, the lack of clarity on whether employment services will still be paid for placing clients into a work for the dole activity if that client fails to show up.
“They are moving to a purely outcome based system,” Ellem said.
Labor said it had not been briefed by Scullion on the changes, which shadow indigenous affairs minister Shayne Neumann labelled “draconian and authoritarian”.
“The government has announced this with a lot of fanfare,” Neumann said. “Now they’re seeing that [solving remote joblessness] is more difficult and complex than they thought.”
Greens spokeswoman on Indigenous affairs, Rachel Siewert, said the changes to RJCP were developed “on the run”.
“It’s an appalling, patronising, paternalistic way of treating people,” Siewert said. “It’s ill-thought through, ideological based policy.”
About 85% of jobseekers using the RJCP are Aboriginal or Torres Strait islander people.
One forum attendee, who asked Guardian Australia not to name them, said that the changes to the RJCP were “racist” because apply predominantly to Indigenous people, and the measures imposed are much harsher than those applied to broader society.
Siewert agrees that the new RJCP is not “applying the same rules in urban communities” as it does in largely Indigenous ones.
Employment agencies are worried that the complexity of the new arrangements will mean some jobseekers in remote areas will move to urban areas, where the RJCP does not apply, or even opt out of the welfare system.
“It’s our strong view that you would see a lot of people withdraw from the labour force altogether,” Weepers said.
Ellem said that people are already dropping out of the welfare system, and instead living off the land or relying on friends and family to get by.
He warned that there was a danger of undercutting paid employment within remote communities, as employers may choose to opt for the unpaid labour of the work for the dole scheme.
The participants of the scheme are paid less than minimum wage by the federal government, and do not receive workplace entitlements like sick leave or holiday pay like other employees do.
Ellem said that while the approved activities of the work for the dole scheme were not meant to encroach on the services provided by local, state or federal governments, there was always a danger of cross-over.
Activities like painting council houses or cleaning up local areas may “remove the need for governments to properly fund services”, he said.
