After all those dole diaries and ‘mutual obligations’, it turns out Australia’s privatised employment services don’t work

‘The whole sorry saga reveals a strange paradox in which the unemployed have been collectively, uniformly punished for a structural problem.’ Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters

A parliamentary inquiry report on 30 years of privatised employment services is out and it is damning.

So it should be. Workforce Australia issues the largest spend on contracts from the government – second in amount only to defence – yet it’s been deemed inefficient, fractured, “broken”and responsible for holding back Australia’s entire economy by failing to supply the labour the country actually needs.