All sorts of Australians require support to get back into the workplace – but for certain groups, there can be extra barriers to getting back on your feet, writes Zac Batchelor
Recently, the Albanese government announced changes to employment services that give public servants a greater role, which is welcome.
But it still leaves for-profit providers at the heart of a multibillion-dollar system that all evidence shows has been a catastrophic failure.
A failure to jobseekers, a failure to our community and a failure to Australian workers out there doing the right thing.
From time to time, all sorts of Australians require support to get back into the workplace.
However, for certain groups, there can be additional barriers to getting back on your feet – if you’re an older worker, if you have a disability, if you’re First Nations, if you’re in regional or remote area of Australia.
This means it is essential that there are trained employment consultants, with sensible caseloads embedded in the community, driven not by ticking boxes and churning through jobseekers, but to get the right result.
The reality is the more these services are outsourced, the less Australian jobseekers are receiving the services they deserve – services delivered by trained and trusted public sector workers.
A report released last month “Who’s rorting who? The Failure of Outsourced Job Services” by the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) sets a clear example on how the outsourcing of government services is costing Australians more.
The CICTAR report found a system riddled with complex ownership structures.
While many providers operate as not-for-profit organisations, some of the largest players in the sector are for-profit.
The CPSU has campaigned relentlessly to bring Commonwealth employment services back into government hands, and this report is just another damning indictment of a system that continues to blatantly reward greedy corporations for victimising job seekers and treating them as a commodity to be exploited.
Several individuals have gained significant personal wealth through this privatised system, with some even appearing on the Australian Financial Review Rich List through their work in the sector.
Other major employment service providers are foreign owned and operate out of overseas jurisdictions with limited transparency laws.
Put simply – they are putting profit over people. These larger providers are engaging in highly aggressive tax minimisation strategies through profit shifting and complex corporate arrangements.
We are seeing Australian taxpayer funds not only leaving local communities but often being transferred offshore to minimise tax obligations.
Money that could otherwise be supporting Australian workers, strengthening local economies and delivering better public services.
Instead, we are seeing these profits being taken from communities where they could have been reinvested and spent locally. And as these local communities continue to be faced with cost-of-living pressures, they really do need it most.
While some individuals and businesses have undoubtedly benefited financially from the outsourced employment services model, the experiences of the many Australians who interact with the system tell a very different story.
In speaking with people who have worked within the sector, it becomes clear that the system pushes outcomes based on meeting quotas and ticking boxes, and, in some cases, this goes as far as allegations of exploitation.
Australians have every right to feel let down. The privatisation of Commonwealth Employment Services (CES) in 1998 is an example of a broader trend over my lifetime, where the responsibility for the delivery of government services has increasingly been outsourced with little or no accountability from government.
In 1998, when unemployment was above 7 per cent, the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) was publicly delivered and cost Australian taxpayers approximately $800 million annually.
When you talk to people who knew the public system back in the day, you’ll hear fond memories of their experiences getting help from the CES – not something you hear often from Australians now who have interacted with the privatised employment services network
Today, the outsourced employment services system costs more than $2bn in contracted payments alone. That figure does not include the substantial costs incurred by the Australian Public Service to regulate, monitor and oversee the outsourced sector.
A smart proactive government looking to increase productivity and support Australians through a cost-of-living crisis should see the privatised employment market as an opportunity. An opportunity to act on yet another example of something privatised that should and could be brought back into the public service to the benefit of all Australians.
The reality is: Australians are paying more, governments are spending more, and in many cases service quality has deteriorated.
The question is no longer whether outsourcing works in theory but how we reverse the damage we’ve done.
Zac Batchelor is the Regional Secretary of CPSU Tasmania
First published in Hobart Mercury on August 5 2026 as ‘Employment agency outsourcing works in theory but it’s costing more than the CES’ by Zac Batchelor
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