Employment Minister Stuart Robert tells unemployed Australians to go out and get a job

Employment Minister Stuart Robert has defended the ‘DobSeeker’ reporting line and unleashed at Australians not willing to find a job.

The nation’s fed-up employment minister has lashed Australians not willing to work and urged the unemployed to get off the dole and find a job.

More than 1.23 million Australians are now receiving JobSeeker and Youth Allowance benefits, up almost 400,000 more than before the coronavirus pandemic.

But the lack of jobs doesn’t seem to be a problem, with job websites and large employers such as Domino’s Pizza offering thousands of positions, but many businesses have seen a significant drop in applicants.

Federal Employment Minister Stuart Robert on Monday urged unemployed Australians to stop relying on their neighbours and go out and find a job.

He said the government wanted to get Australians back into work.

Mr Robert said the purpose of a new reporting line dubbed DobSeeker – where employers can dob in applicants who turn down a role – was to make sure unemployed Australians fulfilled their responsibility to their community.

“One of the reasons for the national employer reporting line is to say to Australians you have a responsibility, you just can’t sit on the JobSeeker payment and expect your neighbours to cover that lifestyle,” he told the Today show.

“We want you into work, we want give you every opportunity to train and reskill and we want you to turn up.

A sign for casual staff wanted at a retail store in Chatswood. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

“The whole point of the national reporting line is to ensure that mutual obligations, which is people’s responsibility back to their community, to their neighbours, are fulfilled.”

Mr Robert said there were still a lot of people who were out of work, and with plenty of jobs advertise, the “opportunity is there for Australians who are on benefits to get out there and get a job”.

Employment Minister Stuart Robert urged people to stop relying on their neighbours. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

He said it was too early to say how many people had been busted through the national reporting line as it had only been operating for a couple of weeks.

He said numbers would be available at the end of each month.

Mr Robert said the difficulty of bringing international workers in to fill job vacancies was the challenges of international border closures caused by the pandemic.

“Why have we got to a point where we are happy for Australians to say ‘no, you don’t have to do those jobs, we’ll get someone from overseas, you just stay on benefits and your neighbour will pay those costs’,” he said.

People queue outside a Centrelink office in Bondi Junction as the coronavirus pandemic started to take hold in March 2020. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett

“How have we got to the point where that is acceptable in our country?

“Why have we got to the point where people are talking about their entitlements but not their responsibilities, and that’s what, partially, the employer reporting line is all about.”

Mr Robert said the unemployment rate of 5.6 per cent was an encouraging sign things were heading in the right direction.

The JobSeeker payment was increased by $50 a fortnight to $620.80 from April 1 this year.

But the mutual obligation reporting requirements were also strengthened, with the minimum number of monthly job searches required increasing from eight to 15.