03/11/2025
💸 How to Burn $2.1 Billion and Still Fail 87% of the Time: Australia's World-Class Job Agency Scam: By Pigsfly News – With a strong dose of “you’ve got to be kidding me” and a side of colonial hangover - Ah, Australia. Land of sweeping deserts, sparkling beaches, and private job agencies that make a killing delivering failure—one taxpayer dollar at a time. If you're wondering how to spend $2.1 billion and still fail nearly 90% of the people you're supposed to help, well—take a seat. You're about to get a masterclass in bureaucratic grift, thinly veiled racism, and white saviour theatre.
Spoiler: The System Isn’t Broken. It’s Working Exactly As Designed.
Let’s start with the headline stat: According to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations’ own report (which they actually had the nerve to publish), only 11.7% of jobseekers placed through the taxpayer-funded employment services system found work lasting more than 26 weeks. That’s right—nearly 90% still jobless, but the agencies still got their cheques.
Government-speak calls it “$2.1 billion.” In plain English: that’s $2,100,000,000.
Let that sink in. And to help you visualise the burn: that’s enough to pay a government staffer $405 a day—every single day, weekends and public holidays included—for the next 14,197 years. Or, you know, until climate change finally swallows Parliament House.
CDP: Colonisation Delivered Personally™
Now, if you’re thinking “Wow, that’s awful,”—just wait until you get to how this mess treats First Nations people.
Enter the Community Development Program (CDP)—Australia’s very own apartheid-lite employment system. Designed specifically for remote Aboriginal communities, CDP enforces stricter rules, harsher penalties, and more “mutual obligation” hours than anywhere else in the country. No jobs available? No matter. Just tick the boxes, scrub the community centre, and pretend this isn't a continuation of colonial punishment economics.
Because apparently stolen land, generational poverty, and systemic exclusion aren’t enough—now you also have to “earn” your already inadequate welfare payment by jumping through flaming hoops that city-dwellers aren't even shown.
This is what we call equal opportunity failure—but with a racial filter applied.
Meanwhile, in White Australia™…
While First Nations communities are being micromanaged into the ground by a bloated, racist bureaucracy, we’re supposed to believe the same system is "supporting" everyone equally. Enter the white knight of performance politics: Tony Abbott, former PM, rebranded as the “Indigenous envoy” no one asked for.
What did Tony do? Well, mostly bike around remote communities with a media entourage, wave from the saddle like some colonial crusader, then head back to Canberra to do precisely nothing about the housing crisis, lack of infrastructure, rampant unemployment, or decades of underfunding. But hey—at least he showed up once a year for his photo op in front of a termite-infested outstation. We must be grateful.
He’s “gone” now—but let’s be real. The only thing that’s gone is the Lycra. The policy mindset—the white saviourism, the paternalistic bureaucracy, the entire “we know what’s best for you” industrial complex—is alive and thriving.
A Jobseeker’s Paradise… For Everyone But the Jobseekers
Let’s do the math:
590,965 people in the system.
$3,575 per “outcome.”
That’s $2,100,000,000 in public funds spent to deliver just 76,825 people into jobs lasting more than a few months—many of which they found themselves.
What other industry could fail this completely and still be rewarded? Imagine a political staffer—let’s call them “Beetroot’s Media Advisor”—tasked with delivering two photo ops a week for their MP boss. That’s 104 events a year.
But instead, they only deliver 14 photo ops. That's 13% success, about the same as our job providers.
Now ask yourself: would Beetroot’s advisor still have a job? Not a bloody chance. They’d be out faster than you can say "ministerial reshuffle."
But when you're a government-backed job provider? 13% success is somehow good enough. Go figure.
Centrelink: Because Threats Are Cheaper Than Help
Meanwhile, over at Centrelink HQ, things are going great—if you’re into punishing the poor. New data shows payment suspensions being dished out at a rate of five per minute. That’s 2.6 million suspension actions in a year—most under the guise of “mutual obligation,” which, let’s be honest, is just bureaucracy-speak for ‘jump when we say jump.’
The government even admitted it paused cancellations earlier this year because it couldn’t confirm whether they were actually legal. You know it’s bad when the government looks at its own system and goes: “Hmm, are we breaking the law? Let’s just stop until we figure it out.”
And for those in remote communities—mostly First Nations—where internet is patchy and phones are a luxury? Good luck not missing a compliance meeting and getting cut off. But don't worry—your job provider will still get paid, even if you're eating Weet-Bix with water.
“The Labour Market’s Shifting” – AKA Blame the Poor Again
Naturally, the Department of Employment has a ready-made excuse: the labour market is moving towards “higher-skilled roles.” Translation: we cut education, underfunded training, and now act surprised when people can’t land a coding job in a mining town with one bus a week.
And if you’re homeless? Or from a non-English-speaking background? Yeah—double disqualified.
But again, there’s plenty of funding for more consultants, flashier offices, and job agency execs in late-model SUVs. Because in this upside-down system, failure pays handsomely—as long as you fail upward.
Final Thought: Australia’s Employment System—A Whitewashed Machine Built to Fail the Most Marginalised
We’ve created a system where:
The agencies win.
The unemployed lose.
First Nations people are locked into a punitive model that reinforces colonial control under the banner of “support.”
And the politicians just keep cycling past the whole mess with a GoPro and a grin.
It’s a scheme so rotten it deserves its own royal commission—but instead, we’ll probably just throw another billion at it, slap on a new logo, and call it “Workforce 3.0.”
Meanwhile, the people who actually deserve help—those living with the legacy of stolen land, stolen wages, and stolen futures—are still being blamed for a system that was never built for them in the first place.
But sure—let’s keep calling it “mutual obligation.” It’s mutual, after all… if you count mutual suffering.
Employment department’s annual report shows just 11.7% of jobseekers ended up with jobs lasting at least 26 weeks last year
