Labor must abolish Work for the Dole before it destroys more lives

Seven years ago, 18-year-old Josh Park-Fing was killed on a Work for the Dole site at the Toowoomba Showgrounds.

Josh was sent by his job service provider to collect rubbish on the showgrounds. He received $10.20 a week for this labour, on top of his paltry unemployment payment.

As a Work for the Dole participant, Josh was required to work for 25 hours a week to fulfil his mutual obligation requirements. He wasn’t given proper training, guidance or safety equipment. During his second week at the showgrounds he hurt his back, but when he informed his job agency he was told they didn’t want to fill out the paperwork required for exemption. Not wanting to be cut off from his welfare payments, he returned to work.

Back on site, Josh was told to climb up on the back of a trailer, which was being towed by a tractor, to collect the bins around the grounds. He wasn’t provided a harness, and when the tractor slipped a gear and jolted, he was flung off the trailer, hitting his head. Josh died on the way to the hospital. Reports later confirmed there was no certified supervisor on the site.

Josh’s death exposed the dire health and safety conditions on Work for the Dole sites. Two months later, a government-commissioned report found that 64% of sites did not meet basic health and safety standards.

Josh’s family repeatedly asked then-employment minister Michaelia Cash to shut the program down. But Cash — part of the previous Coalition government, which showed little care for welfare recipients (as evidenced by the robodebt royal commission) — refused.

Similarly galling is that our new government — the supposed party of labour — is also refusing to shut the program down, with Employment Minister Tony Burke recently saying it’s “too late”.  

Work for the Dole funnels the most disadvantaged workforce in the country into some of the most dangerous, unregulated work in the country. It is social policy that needlessly endangers people’s lives.

The current parliamentary inquiry into employment services has received damning reports from disadvantaged people who’ve been forced into the work-based welfare system. 

Most disturbingly, a participant told the inquiry they were forced into the program while recovering from a broken back. The participant describes the program as “horrendous” for their physical and mental health, forcing a “sharp increase in required medication for both”.

They also claim that “required safety inspections weren’t done” and that they were required to run a lawnmower “through a pile of chipped-up asbestos fencing underneath some grass”.

Thanks to the Abbott-era reforms, we’ve witnessed a sharp increase in the number of people in their 50s and 60s forced to Work for the Dole. These are mostly those who have worked all their lives, now excluded from the labour market because of their age or ill health. 

Last month, I spoke to a man in his 60s who lost his job after suffering a heart attack. Instead of supporting him before he reaches pension age, the government has forced him into essentially free labour.

None of this harm and exploitation should occur. Julian Hill, Labor’s TikTok backbencher and chair of the employment services inquiry, acknowledged that “the state should not make people do things that harm them” to receive income support.

Yet almost a year into office and seven years after Josh’s death, this is what his government has been inflicting on unemployed workers. At this point, the program is so toxic, even the job agencies that profit from it are calling for the government to can it.

With the stroke of a pen, Labor could end a program that torments the poorest segment of the working class and has done for the best part of three decades. Fiscally, it would cost it nothing. All it would take is a government that upholds its values to protect the safety and dignity of all workers.