How our jobs system is failing the people who desperately need it
Taxpayer-funded schemes notoriously invite opportunists to work the system - think pink batts and the baby bonus. Now it seems desperate jobseekers may be the targets.
Opinion
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History has shown that taxpayer funded schemes are a guaranteed invitation for some opportunists to work the system for a slice of free money.
We saw it to deadly effect with the pink batts, the baby bonus flat screen TV frenzy, and there are no end of problems with the solar bonus.
Jobseekers being lured into training for jobs that don’t exist
Jobseekers being lured into training for jobs that don’t exist
There’s no question that upskilling people in a jobs crisis is important. But pouring taxpayer funds into training packages in industries where jobs are scarce to non-existent is simply a colossal waste.
Offering training packages under the guise there are job vacancies is demoralising and a waste of time for thousands of unemployed Queenslanders desperate for work.
Long-term employed Queenslanders who lost their job amid the coronavirus downturn are already in an unenviable position. Some haven’t experienced a dole queue in decades.
To then be pushed by job agencies into training under the cover of ready-to-go jobs exposes a big gap in the reach and powers of regulators.
While registered training organisations with arrangements to access the state funds are heavily regulated, the recruitment companies they work with are not.
That means any third-party financial arrangements are almost impossible to detect.
A full independent inquiry is the only way to unearth how much of the hundreds of millions of taxpayer funds poured into training is being wasted.
Annastacia Palaszczuk was quick to call an independent inquiry in 2017 after The Sunday Mail revealed tow truck drivers were ripping off motorists in a private parking lots.
But a week after vowing a clamp down on the state-funded training program, the Premier has stopped short of calling an independent inquiry. Meanwhile, job applicants are scratching their heads as to why they never got that call back.