A taxpayer-funded course run by one of Australia’s biggest employment service providers gives jobseekers instructions on how to shower properly and asks them in a questionnaire if one of the reasons they are unemployed is because they are ‘overweight’ or ‘lazy’, reports The Guardian. Wise Employment is among dozens of privatised job agencies contracted by the federal government to run the AUD 500 million (USD 315.9 million) Employability Skills Training program to help jobseekers ‘become job-ready by providing intensive pre-employment training’. But months after participants raised concerns about Wise Employment’s version of the program, prompting an investigation, jobseekers and advocates have levelled new claims that the course still ‘degrades and humiliates’ those looking for work.

According to the course workbook, jobseekers are initially asked to complete a questionnaire about their barriers to employment. “Do you have barriers to employment you need to acknowledge and control?” the jobseeker is asked, before being told to tick the ones that are applicable. The list of dozens of possible answers includes being “overweight” or “underweight”, being “lazy”, not wanting to come off welfare payments or having a bad attitude. In another section that advises jobseekers on the importance of ‘personal presentation in the workplace’, jobseekers are instructed on maintaining proper hygiene and are given directions for showering, washing hair and shaving daily.

Privatised employment services have been plagued by claims that job agencies provide poor-quality courses and training for jobseekers, including potentially demeaning lessons about personal hygiene. The new allegations surrounding the Wise course come after the chair of a parliamentary inquiry investigating the system, the Labour MP Julian Hill, called for a new independent watchdog with powers to oversee pricing and quality. Wise Employment told The Guardian that the material was ‘inappropriate’ and that it had suspended new referrals to the subcontractor, Paramount Training.

This is the second time Paramount Training has been investigated by Wise Employment after Guardian Australia revealed in August that jobseekers were being made to watch YouTube videos on safety protocols at a Dutch gas company and the application guidelines for a Victorian government tender as part of their training. Paramount Training said the investigation in May had resulted in one person being fired, and that it had introduced more training for staff and a “monitoring” and “feedback” system for participants.

Meanwhile, the secretary of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations issued a direct warning to job agencies about training this year and said it ‘will continue to engage with all employment services providers to ensure the language being used is appropriate for the audience’.