Thread on my experience in the P.A.T.H. program:

The horrors of the “T”(Trial) part of P.A.T.H have been in the media lately,but there’s virtually nothing on the “P” (Prepare) training aspect. (1/11)

@AusUnemployment

These courses are (mostly) all privately administered and run, and are all Government funded. In the dying days of Port Adelaide TAFE, me and 10 or so unemployed workers found ourselves herded up its quiet steps for 3 weeks of “Business Employability Skills Training"
(2/11)

The instructor started by asking us to introduce ourselves, and what surprised me most was that the majority of everyone in the “class” had a tertiary degree or had been working since high school, yet we had all ended up on Centrelink. (3/11)

I've been a veteran of two P.A.T.H courses, including a coffee making course where I never touched a coffee machine. The story that defines P.A.T.H for me is the “scavenger hunt” we were forced to do. With the holy grail of a Freddo Frog on the line, (4/11)

we all broke into groups of 3 & wandered the empty halls of Port Adelaide TAFE to tick off our lists. Some of the tasks included:counting the number of carparks (144 from memory), naming all the drinks in the canteen vending machine,finding a “business book” in the library,(5/11)

and the piece de’ resistance “take a silly selfie with the security guard” and also with the instructor! Besides scavenger hunts, we spent most afternoons watching old 90's "customer service skills 101" videos (6/11)

where smiling cafe owners explained to us the importance of keeping up with the pace of the business world. I also vividly remember a young man I met. He was 22 and had been caring for his severely disabled younger sister and terminally ill mother for the last few years. (7/11)

He’d been denied the Disability Support Pension and Carers’ Payment, and despite having a significant intellectual disability himself, had been forced into the Government funded P.A.T.H course. He struggled immensely with reading, (8/11)

and walked away one day in tears with his frustration with being unable to read the written component for this one task. As a result, he had his payments suspended for failing to meet his mutual obligation requirements. (9/11)

That's what P.A.T.H is meant to do, that's what this whole jobactive system is about. It's about breaking you down with meaningless tasks and bureaucratic loops,to make you quit or take any job - no matter how exploitative - then spend another day in the system. (10/11)

It's an endless scavenger hunt, ticking infinite boxes, for the luxury to starve on the dole. (11/11).