Trade unions want the Commonwealth Employment Service brought back, in part because the government manages contracts with private providers poorly. But it might also manage the service poorly.
Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
30 years ago, Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating adopted an ambitious official target for Australian unemployment. The Albanese government just passed up a historic opportunity to go even further.
The new paper says closer to 2.8 million Australians are in some way unemployed, equivalent to one-fifth of the current workforce. That’s much more than the official unemployment total of 539,700.
In the white paper, prepared by Treasury, the government commits to full employment, which it defines as “everyone who wants a job being able to find one without searching for too long”
Monday’s white paper will define fuill employment more broadly than in the past as when “everyone who wants a job should be able to find one without searching for too long”.