The rollout of the federal government’s new unemployment services program, Workforce Australia, has been derailed by technical issues, with some of the 750,000 Australians who must use the system or face losing their welfare payments unable to access the service.
Monday marked the first official day of Workforce Australia, a refreshed scheme that replaced jobactive. The program ditches the current mutual obligations in favour of a Points Based Activation System (PBAS), an automated program that requires Australians receiving the JobSeeker payment to carry out tasks in order to receive their payments.
With their means to pay rent or buy food on the line, welfare recipients who had been transferred into the Workforce Australia program tried to log into the new system — but many were unable to.
“Day 1 of Workforce Australia: currently can’t log in,” Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU) spokesperson Jeremy Poxon tweeted on Monday morning. Other people responded saying they were also being shown “500 internal server error” messages. “It isn’t working,” user Jay Coonan said.
Soon after, Workforce Australia’s new Twitter account acknowledged they were having issues. “There were some intermittent issues for some clients for a short time earlier today. The site is performing well,” the account tweeted optimistically.
A spokesperson for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations later apologised for the issues but said they had been corrected.
“Tens of thousands of online users have already successfully accessed services today. If you’re moving into Workforce Australia and experiencing log-in issues, please try again,” they said in a statement. Still, users said they were having issues into Tuesday.
Even those who were able to log in were confronted by issues. One user noted that the Workforce Australia system includes an individual’s legal name despite having supplied their preferred name, leading to situations where trans people are unnecessarily deadnamed.
Others were shocked at Workforce Australia’s seemingly redundant smartphone application that doesn’t allow people to apply for jobs or fulfil obligations within the app. One user who picked through the app’s code found that it had multiple programming languages used within — the app development equivalent of finding an abandoned restaurant hidden behind a wall in a mall.
Last week, Employment Minister Tony Burke announced tweaks to the incoming system, but defended it as helping Australians prepare for and then find work while also providing flexibility. The AUWU says the new system is cruel and has called for a three-month suspension of the new system to consult with those people who the scheme affects.
Why o why o why do we just keep inventing new ways to be cruel to people who already have major sh– in their lives?!!!
Everyone involved, from the minister down, should have to spend 3 months on benefits themselves.
As per Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Software of any complexity is get hard to right, more so when it’s rushed to meet an external deadline.
And even more so when it’s done at the behest of the last government.
With Digital Passenger Declaration, Minister O’Neill bit the bullet, ditching a clearly defective and high-handed process for which a Big 4 consultancy gouged $75m (not $750,000!) from the Morrison Government.
In this case too, I would be confident that a similar Coalition gravy-train consultancy was operating, with scant departmental consideration of how dodgy programming can adversely affect vulnerable Australians. Perhaps a slightly less sadistic version of robo-debt? If problems persist, will the new Minister rethink it?
Name 1 on line government service that has worked seamlessly??- there hasn’t been any.
The call services hardly exist. Hours waiting and then wrong information.
Is the new government another Neoliberal front, just a milder version like Turnbull?
Paying people on welfare properly will guarantee the next election if media laws are changed to force a balanced perspective rather than the 70% Neocon crud we are now subjected to.
Stu
It doesnt matter who is at the top we will get the same thing. Remeber the election marketing it was about the personality of the leaders and vague stuff about saving the the world. where is our ABC on this, have a loook at the website,
Terrence – It was a Presidential style election campaign promoted by the media. You know that Republican stuff we (Stralia) voted against etc. Have you been conned – You bet you have.
“Is the new government another Neoliberal front, just a milder version like Turnbull?”
Wasn’t this implemented under the previous government (with the current government following along so as to not be wedged)?
Exactly. Labor won the election. Unemployment is around 4 percent. Why is the current Government following a bad example?
I believe the claim is that it was already in train and could not be stopped. Given that parliament has yet to sit, that could be a valid excuse – let’s see what happens when parliament resumes.
Burke and Labor would turn away at their peril.
It’s not a media issue but a moral issue. People aren’t blank slates taking in whatever the media tells them to. Rather on the issue of welfare, it’s a reflection of how we think about fairness on a deep level. Just talk to those who oppose welfare reform and you’ll hear the same thing: “what they get is more than they deserve” and “they should get a job and work for a living”.
Each time the same theme is money for nothing, or worse “the use of my tax dollars to fund another’s life”. Welfare states are a really modern invention, and it’s hard to think of any example of one that’s overcome the above-mentioned moral outrage at those on it. Just look at how experiments with Universal income get quickly shelved irrespective of how they work.
The same people who are outraged at their hard-earned taxes being spent on unemployment “bludgers” don’t hold the same contempt for the big businesses, international conglomerates and friends of pollies getting millions in handouts, or even the small businesses ripping off the tax system with creative expenses that are probably worth more than the average welfare-dependent family gets in (barely) subsistence allowance.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Look at the polls around business and government handouts. The same attitudes are there as they are to welfare recipients. Priority may differ in the need to address the problems, but I’d that would fall along tribal political lines because it’s not entirely clear how to deal with those in the same way we’d deal with individuals committing a moral wrong.
A livable welfare payment is a helluva lot cheaper than crime & punishment.
It even provides more jobs than vast numbers of steroid sodden beweaponed thugs with a badge and sense of immunity.
It would be great if welfare could be sorted to actually be effective, cost-efficient, and devoid of cruelty, but I think it’s important to recognise that it’s political will more than anything that prevents meaningful humane reform on this issue. We have the burdensome convoluted system we have now because the wider populace demands it.
Personally I’d love to see a serious attempt at universal income as a means to bypass the current impasse in the welfare debate. I’m not sure if it would entirely override the free rider objections, but it may move the conversation away from individual moral failings to one about a functioning society.
Morrison like Abbott and Howard has a great contempt for welfare recipients. Same for all migrants. The public service has been gutted and “customer service” severely degraded.
And I am just wondering how those without much English, are coping with system and the technology, especially women who’ve been put on Newstart when their youngest child is 8 and they’ve never worked before.
Had to laugh recently wjen I fronted up to Centrelink to sort out a pension issue when the woman behind the desk asked me if I had called the help line. I asked her if she had ever called it. No more discussion after that we dealt with the issue there and then.
All governments, red or blue, hate welfare recipients and manifest their contempt by the huge obstacles they put in the way of people trying to access services.
Pure contempt.