Information about the Inquiry
On 13 May
2009, the Senate referred the following matter to the References Senate
Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations for
report by 25 June 2009:
(a) the conduct of the 2009 tendering process by the Department of
Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to award Employment
Services contracts, with particular attention to:
(i) the
design on the tender, including the weighting given to past performance
and the weighting given to the ‘value for money’ delivered by previous
and new service providers,
(ii) evaluation of the tenders submitted against the selection criteria,
including the relationship between recent service performance
evaluations in various existing programs (such as provider star
ratings), selection criteria and tendering outcomes, and
(iii) the extent to which the recommendations of the 2002 Productivity
Commission report into employment services have been implemented;
(b) the level of change of service providers and proportion of job
seekers required to change providers, and the impacts of this disruption
in communities with high levels of unemployment or facing significant
increases in unemployment;
(c) any differences between the recommendations of the Tender Assessment
Panel and the announcement by the Minister for Employment Participation
of successful tenders on 2 April;
(d) the transaction costs of this level of provider turnover, the time
taken to establish and ‘bed-down’ new employment services, and the
likely impacts of this disruption on both new and existing clients
seeking support during a period of rapidly rising unemployment;
(e) communication by the department to successful and unsuccessful
tenderers, the communications protocol employed during the probity
period, and referrals to employment services by Centrelink during the
transition period;
(f) the extent to which the Government has kept its promise that
Personal Support Program, Job Placement Employment and Training and
Community Work Coordinator providers would not be disadvantaged in the
process, and the number of smaller ‘specialist’ employment service
providers delivering more client-focused services still supported by the
Employment Services program;
(g) the particular impact on Indigenous Employment Services providers
and Indigenous-focused Employment Services providers;
(h) the Employment Services Model, including whether it is sustainable
in a climate of low employment growth and rising unemployment, and
whether there is capacity to revise it in the face of changed economic
circumstances; and
(i) recommendations
for the best way to maintain an appropriate level of continuity of
service and ongoing sector viability while at the same time ensuring
service quality and accountability and maximising the ancillary benefits
for social inclusion through connection and integration with other
services.
Submissions may be uploaded online from the
committee website:
https://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/inquiries.htm,
emailed to the following email address:
eewr.sen@aph.gov.au or sent to the following address:
Committee
Secretary
Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600
The closing
date for submissions is
Thursday, 28 May 2009.
Notes to
assist in preparing submissions are available from the website
https://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/wit_sub/index.htm.
Once the
committee accepts your submission, it becomes a confidential committee
document. Release of your submission without the committee's permission
will remove the protection of parliamentary privilege. The committee
normally makes submissions public. Please indicate if you want your
submission to be kept confidential.
Inquiries
from hearing and speech impaired people should be directed to the
Parliament House TTY number (02 6277 7799). Adobe also provides tools
for the visually impaired to access PDF documents. These tools are
available at:
http://access.adobe.com/.
If you require any special arrangements in order to enable you to
participate in a committee inquiry, please contact the secretary.
For further information, contact:
Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committees on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia