Economic Justice Australia (EJA) welcomes the recent Federal Government announcement of an improved complaints service for employment services, having repeatedly raised alarm bells at the ineffectiveness of the current system. The peak body for social security legal centres in Australia has long pushed for a complaints mechanism that allows for a proper review of decisions that affect people’s social security payments, and which facilitates decisions made with the application of procedural fairness.
“For years we’ve been hearing from our member centres and the broader community about issues with the existing complaints system,” says EJA CEO Kate Allingham. “People have regularly given up on making complaints, feeling they had no option to get unfair decisions reviewed and fearing retribution from employment services, which have the power to cut off their social security payments.
“It has been so bad that people have disengaged with the system entirely, after repeated payment suspensions and cancellations. It is clear a system is broken if people are forced to make a choice between poverty and an unusable system, and they are opting for the former.”
Announced by the Government on Friday 6 December, the new complaints service will give people a much more effective method for acting against unfair decisions made by employment services. It will provide access to a fairer review of decisions that impact often vulnerable people’s ability to access social security payments.
Under the new model, a dedicated team of investigators in the Australian Public Service will be employed to review lodged complaints, instead of the previously problematic and opaque model whereby people were automatically referred back to their employment services provider to resolve complaints by themselves.
“In our issues paper on complaints processes, released earlier this year, EJA noted that complaints that automatically went to the provider were often never heard of again,” says Ms Allingham. “The issues with this system were almost too numerous to count: often the provider was not contactable, the provider refused to accept the complaint, the staff member who received the complaint did not have the correct information or training to deal with it, or the person making the complaint wasn’t provided with an interpreter or information in their language.”
In the issues paper, EJA also noted that “complaints about the complaints process is one of the top five reasons for complaints being made to the employment services National Customer Service line”. The newly implemented requirement for routine public reporting, which will improve transparency around complaints and complaint data, is a welcome improvement. EJA commends the additional reform that requires providers to respond to any complaints that are raised.
“We fully support the changes announced by Minister Watt, and look forward to working with him and the Department further on reforms that bring us closer to a supportive – rather than punitive – model of employment services,” says Ms Allingham.
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Media contact: Kirsty Sier | 0435 075 085 | kirsty@ejaustralia.org.au
Additional resources:
- ‘Leaving people with nowhere to go: EJA issues paper on complaints processes in employment services’ (July 2024)
- Senator the Hon Murray Watt, Media Release: ‘New complaints service to make employment providers more accountable’ (December 2024)