The legality of the system designed to penalise jobseekers has been thrown into doubt after the commonwealth ombudsman found a government department\u2019s automatic system unlawfully cancelled payments.<\/p>\n
The ombudsman has found 964 jobseekers had their payments unlawfully cancelled between April 2022 and July 2024 by the automated IT system that underpins the targeted compliance framework system.<\/p>\n
TCF is designed to make sure jobseekers meet requirements such as attending meetings with an employment provider and applying for jobs to continue to receive their payments.<\/p>\n
Payment cancellations have been paused since January after the government found a further 1,326 people had financial penalties \u201capplied incorrectly\u201d due to an IT issue.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n On top of this, 45 people had their payments illegally cancelled because the system continued to operate in error.<\/p>\n On Wednesday the ombudsman found the payments had been cancelled unlawfully and recommended the government continue to pause cancellations until the it could review the legality of the entire TCF system.<\/p>\n The ombudsman, Iain Anderson, said he had investigated cancellations in which public servants working at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations had failed to consider individual circumstances before cancelling a payment as laid down by law.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were just automating the cancellation without considering the individual circumstances of the jobseeker and whether it was appropriate to cancel the payment or not,\u201d he told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cThe target compliance framework itself has been very problematic in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson said that in 2022 DEWR was also meant to put in a \u201cdigital protection framework\u201d to ensure jobseekers were treated fairly but the department had failed to do so.<\/p>\n Anderson said the secretary of DEWR, Natalie James, needed to be \u201ccompletely confident\u201d the system was working properly before the cancellations resume.<\/p>\n \u201cThe targeted compliance framework has had a number of different problems, and so the secretary of DEWR needs to do much more than simply look at the unlawful cancellation issue.<\/p>\n \u201cThey need to be really certain that the entire target compliance framework is going to comply with the law and be fair.\u201d<\/p>\n He said there were also concerns as to whether the suspension of payments, which happens in tens of thousands of cases each month, was legal.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWe have some concerns as to whether the suspension process is happening fairly and reasonably,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n On top of this, Guardian Australia understands a Deloitte report into the IT system that underpins the TCF has found that it is not functioning within the proper legal frameworks.<\/p>\n The Deloitte report \u2013 which has yet to be published \u2013 recommends overhauling the TCF\u2019s IT system to ensure that the suspension or cancellation of payments is done legally.<\/p>\n The Greens have called for the government to abolish the TCF and release the report.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is clear that the TCF is an expensive hangover from a conservative government which has been heartlessly prolonged by this Labor government for far too long,\u201d Senator Penny Allman-Payne said.<\/p>\n The DEWR is also conducting a legal review to examine the way decisions are being made under the legislation.<\/p>\n The ombudsman will continue to investigate the TCF with another report due out later in the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The legality of the system designed to penalise jobseekers has been thrown into doubt after the commonwealth ombudsman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-64200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}