Interview with Patricia Karvelas - ABC News, Afternoon Briefing

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST:    Now, the Government's biggest announcement today was its overhaul of Employment Services and the system around it. The reforms announced by the Employment Minister, Amanda Rishworth, will change assessments and mutual obligations to tailor them to individuals' different circumstances. The Minister herself joins me in the studio. Welcome to the program.

AMANDA RISHWORTH, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS:    Great to be with you. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    You've said this is the biggest change in 30 years, and it is significant. What does the different intensity for the three streams mean? Is it essentially about the payment structure - do you think you're giving too much money to providers for getting people easy jobs? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    What I think is happening, unfortunately, is that the way the payments are structured it does encourage people to put their attention to job-ready people and people that might not need a lot of intensity. And so, we know that what's happening is that too many people, about 20 per cent, have been in the system for more than five years. I mean, that means something needs to change. And so I do think, and what we plan to do, is change the payment system for the different streams to ensure that, particularly stream three that's people furthest from the labour market, are getting the support. Because for so long, we've tinkered around the edges - one size fits all. We need to recognise people at different distances and pay service providers to treat them differently. 

I would acknowledge that stream one, which is digital, will be primarily delivered through the Australian Public Service because we think that's the right fit. But across the board, we need different incentives and payments to get the right services. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    Okay. There was a proposal - actually your colleague now, Julian Hill - a couple of years ago, did a big review into all of this and suggested that, in fact, all of it should be taxpayer or, you know, done by the taxpayer, not private providers. Why didn't you go down that route?

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    First I would say, what I'm most interested in is making sure that the services that can support people the best are the ones that actually do the work. If you think about those furtherest from the labour market, they're experiencing both vocational and known vocational barriers. They need support from mental health services, perhaps homelessness services, perhaps indeed, financial counselling. The Commonwealth doesn't run any of those services. Indeed we fund, often, community organisations to do that. 

So, trying to insert the Commonwealth in where we don't have the expertise is not the right thing. But when it comes to how we fund these services there will be, as I said in my speech, a clear demonstration, particularly for those that are supporting stream three, to have deep embedded community connections to enable them to demonstrate they can support, holistically, a person through their journey toward [inaudible]…

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    [Talks over] And that's a lot more expensive. These people are long-term unemployed, they're entrenched in disadvantage and things have only got worse for a lot of people in the cost of living crisis. How much more significant will the payments be to invest in these people to actually see them capable of getting jobs? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Well, it's a really important question. Because we need to spend the money where we can make the difference, and that is actually in that hard-to-reach group. So we, certainly, be doing modelling. We will be rolling out now some early stream three services to understand the cost structure - we've had funding in this Budget to do that. But we also want to uplift at the other end, at the online services At the moment, there is a Workforce Australia online service, but it is not an employment service - it doesn't have tools, support, career mapping. If we can get that right, we can reduce the intensity of service for individuals that can, you know, with a bit of support, make their way through the process and redirect that funding to those that really need our support. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    And how about mutual obligations? It's an idea, obviously, that's been in our system for a long time. Will you change mutual obligations? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    What I want to see is mutual obligations calibrated to where people are in their employment journey. So I'll give you an example - they are quite arbitrary now and they're a set of activities that are meaningless, often, to people. So, if you're in that stream one I was talking about, then most likely you will have quite specific job search and mutual obligations. But if you're down in that stream three, there is no point in putting endless applications into organisations or for jobs when you're just not-.you don't have the work-ready skills. We need to invest in that to move people into jobs. So, mutual obligations will be calibrated to the distance you are from the labour market but, importantly, your journey to employment. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    So, you'll have less mutual obligations on you the longer you're unemployed, though? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    No. What we will have is different obligations - obligations that are calibrated to actually taking that pathway to employment. So, making sure that people are taking those steps - that they are engaging with their service provider; they are not just putting in pointless applications. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    [Talks over] For sure, there's a lot of time wasting. 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    And employers get annoyed. And there is no point in doing training, for example, if you don't have jobs where you live where we're requiring that training. So, we need to make it meaningful and effective. So, I'm moving away from this soft or hard mutual obligation. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    Yeah.

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    We need effective mutual obligations. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    Sure, okay. But there's a lot of politics in all of this and, you know, there's legacy programs in the past like Work for the Dole. Are you saying that those sorts of ideas, you think, are too punitive and don't work? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Well what I'm saying is, when it comes to Work for the Dole and other programs, what they've been invented to do often is to patch up gaps because the mainstream system is not working. So what I've said with- and there's many complementary programs, we will be looking at how the broader system. But I actually want mutual obligations to actually work for both the participant and the service provider, and be meaningful, because people are much more likely to engage. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    Okay. AI is the big question. Can you assure people that AI won't be part of the streamlining process? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    AI could play a role, for example, in a tool to help you develop your resume. I mean, we're talking about uplifting the online service. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    I mean, in determining people's status, dealing with breaches if they don't meet their mutual obligations, will AI play a role in any of that? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    So as what's really important, I have outlined a much more personalised system in the assessment, the triaging. And of course, when we look at compliance we will make sure that any decision making absolutely has discretion in it and it does have, of course, that human element. Now the Government, of course, is looking across the board at how automated decision-making happens in all portfolios. The Attorney-General is working on the guardrails around that. That's really important to go across the board. But at the moment, my department is putting more human discretion into the process around decisions about payments. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    Are you alarmed by the increasing rates of youth unemployment? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Look, youth unemployment is obviously one of the first areas to tick up when you start to see a softening of the labour market. Youth unemployment, though, is lower now than it had been prior to COVID, and it is lower than many other advanced economies. So look, of course, we're always concerned when we see that. Now, these figures do bounce around from month to month, and so- but it is, obviously, always concerning when you see that tick up. But of course, it is lower, and historically lower than it has been in the past. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    I saw you were asked a question at the Press Club in relation to Elon Musk and the idea of kind of having a living wage for people because of all the job losses we are going to see as a result of AI - it's inevitable. Do you have any modelling on what AI could do to unemployment? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Well, Jobs and Skills Australia have done some really important work on this and they have been really clear that the vast majority of jobs will be augmented, not actually replaced by AI. So in the first instance, what's really important so that people don't lose their jobs is make sure they have the skills to actually be able to augment and use AI in their jobs. So, there's a responsibility there on business. Of course Government, we've got to look at how that fits into our foundation skills support. So, across the board we need to make sure people are equipped. I'm not as pessimistic as Elon Musk about massive job losses. I think there'll be a lot of new jobs created as well, and that's certainly research or predictions that have come out from…

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    [Interrupts] Young people are going to bear the brunt of the AI revolution. Don't we need to be doing more to actually safeguard them and that generation? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Well, I think young people are already embracing AI and how they might be able to help their jobs. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    They’re also the victims of it too, though - you've got to reckon with that because that is clearly the case. 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:   Well, we will obviously- and my department's doing a lot of work in tracking the impact on jobs. It is likely going to be the most exposed jobs. They are not necessarily just young people's jobs. I mean, if you think about it, you know, where AI might be playing a role, perhaps, is in call centres, as one example. They can be older women in administration- administrative tasks, typically. So we need to make sure that we are supporting those individuals to be able to get the new jobs that are created. Perhaps going into quality assurance is just one example, but people need the skills to be able to do that. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    Now, if you're changing this system so dramatically and there are so many private providers, do you expect some of these providers to hit the wall - some won't survive? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    It is early in the design phase to actually know where we're going and what we're doing in terms of what the providers look like. I'm absolutely focused on quality. I want to see high quality services that are delivering good outcomes. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    [Talks over] Some of those services [inaudible] won't they? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    [Talks over] It's true. There is a mixed bag out there and there should be no room for poor-quality services in the system, and I don't make any apologies for that. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    Okay. So if that's a consequence, you think that's a good thing? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    If poor quality is in the system, I don't want to see it. I want to see continuous improvement, high quality. We need to get the incentives right to do that from a Government perspective, but there's no room for poor quality. Every Australian deserves a high-quality service. 

PATRICIA KARVELAS:    Minister, thank you for joining us. 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    Thank you.