Four Corners

The Jobs Game (2015x4)

Uitzenddatum: Feb 23, 2015

Unemployment in Australia is at its highest in 12 years. The Government's solution is an innovative billion-dollar scheme called Jobs Services Australia. But the initiative is failing. Now, a Four Corners investigation shows how the scheme is being manipulated and, at times, systematically exploited. Reporter Linton Besser reveals the corruption at the heart of the program aimed at helping some of this country's most vulnerable people. He travels to suburbs where unemployment is a way of life. He meets Kym, struggling to find work and pull her daughter out of a cycle of poverty. There to help are private and not-for-profit job agencies, paid by the Government to help find work for Kym and others like her. These agencies have blossomed thanks to the privatisation of the Commonwealth Employment Service in 1998, and are thriving on contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Unemployment is now big business in Australia. Each year the Government spends about $1.3 billion on its welfare to work scheme. But what happens when there are simply not enough jobs to go around?