The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) has quietly announced they will resume some payment cancellations and suspensions from 26 October 2026, with plans to return the Targeted Compliance Framework to “full operation” by early 2027. DEWR have decided the following penalties will resume under the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth) from 26 October:
- payment suspensions for work refusal failures and
- payment cancellations for not meeting a reconnection requirement within 4 weeks.
In December 2025, the Commonwealth Ombudsman released their report detailing the widespread failures of the Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF), which forces people to engage with dodgy private employment services providers who wield the power to issue breaches with no oversight and no real requirement to provide a reason behind the breach. These “breaches” led to payment suspensions and cancellations, however, DEWR stopped these penalties because they were being made unlawfully at a massive scale.
DEWR revealed their plans to resume sanctions the same day that their Minister, the Hon. Amanda Rishworth MP, was at a conference touting her efforts to help women succeed in small business. The Minister is still yet to provide comment of any kind.
One of the payments affected is the parenting payment for parents whose youngest child is six years or older. Anyone who has ever raised a child knows that even once they’re in school, your caring responsibilities don’t just suddenly disappear, especially if you’re a single mother.
Life is getting harder, and many welfare recipients impoverished by the inadequate levels of our support payments are overwhelmed simply ensuring their own survival. Our communities battle daily with the cost of food and rent, with unpaid bills, with our elderly parents’ medical appointments and the cost of our children’s sports equipment. The list of immediate priorities is long, and it’s no wonder that returning a call from their employment services provider or remembering to check their MyGov inbox falls down the neverending to-do list.
Reconnection requirements are still a seriously risky proposition under the TCF. It’s highly likely that someone who’s failed to reconnect after 4 weeks is in serious trouble in one respect or another. They might’ve been hospitalised, they might’ve just lost their home. Regardless, a payment cancellation in these circumstances risks losing people who probably need an arm around them, and they may disengage permanently. Likewise, work refusal penalties are difficult to administer and the legislation is vague. It is on the jobseeker to argue that an offer of work is unsuitable, in a process that does not offer them a fair shout.
Anyone subject to the ridiculous ‘mutual obligations’ their provider imposes upon them knows that these activities don’t work. But the provider doesn’t care about that, because they can get a payment from the Government every time they force somebody into the provider’s own compulsory training module on shaking someone’s hand or on appearing confident, which have never worked anywhere in the world.
As stated by Greens spokesperson on Social Services, Senator Penny Allman-Payne:
“There is nothing in the Secretary’s statement that provides any confidence in the legal foundations of the system, nor their capacity to administer that system lawfully or fairly, nor any reason to believe the Ombudsman’s concerns have been appropriately addressed.
“There was nothing about improving DEWR’s capacity to monitor providers’ misconduct. They told the Ombudsman that they had an ‘app’ for that, which turned out to be a new dashboard on their existing system. There is no mention of any improved capacities in this regard anywhere.
“My office has heard reports of providers still threatening people with payment suspensions and cancellations to force people to comply with ridiculous or unnecessary requests, usually to bolster the provider’s incentive payment. That’s not helping anyone – that’s coercion.
“If these sanctions are resumed, the providers will be administering them. How can Minister Rishworth or her Department trust these providers to do the right thing, when they are financially incentivised to do otherwise? The TCF appears fundamentally at odds with lawful and fair decision-making.
“The Minister and the Department’s failure to communicate these matters in a timely, effective or comprehensible fashion is characteristic of all the worst Robodebt-style governance.”
