Your voice

The SENVIC Regional Mini-Conference in March 2022 brought together social enterprise leaders from across Victoria.

SENVIC partnered with the Australian Centre for Rural Entrepreneurship (ACRE) to establish the regional network across regional Victoria. After two-years of pandemic disruptions, the SENVIC Regional Mini-Conference was held in March 2022. It gave delegates an insight into community-led rejuvination with our hosts. ACRE’s community-buy-back journey is an inspiration and the Conference was a fitting culmination of our partnership.

On the final day, delegates devised a SENVIC Regional Leads Manifesto for accelerating social enterprise in rural and regional Victoria. The manifesto is an invitation for Government and philanthropy to recognise the fundamental differences in the way that rural and regional communities connect with social enterprise.

Read more here.

We role-model a fair and inclusiove economy, providing dignity and autonomy to some of the most marginalised people in our community.

Have your say in the Federal Government’s reform of Job Active.

The Federal Government recently released a draft of its New Employment Services Model (NESM); the model that will replace jobactive. 

So SENVIC united with our interstate peers to make a joint submission through ASENA – the national alliance of Australia’s social enterprise networks.

Why is this important?

The NESM is the Government’s key program and investment to address unemployment. About $1.5 billion of public money goes towards it each year.

The Government needs job focused social enterprises and the outcomes they create. Jobactive is well understood to have limited and/or negative outcomes for the most disadvantaged job seekers, people job focused social enterprises serve well.

At the same time, jobs focussed social enterprises need a sustainable funding mechanism to support disadvantaged job seekers and to sustain, scale and maximise their impact.

The NESM should be a key instrument to do this. Job focused social enterprises should be able to access the NESM funds if and when they deliver the employment outcomes sought by the NESM. But to make this happen, changes to the NESM are needed.

So the Alliance of Social Enterprise Networks Australia (ASENA), responded to the draft NESM making recommendations for change. 

You can read ASENA’s response to the NESM Exposure Draft here

What can you do?

Sometimes quantity of submissions, not just quality, counts. If you support our response, please contact Stuart Robert, Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business at stuart.robert.mp@aph.gov.au, and let him know. This could be as simple as:

To the Hon. Stuart Robert,

My organisation supports the ASENA response to the Exposure Draft for the New Employment Services Model 2022 Purchasing Arrangements, including the three recommendations in it:

1. That when disadvantaged job seekers are engaged by a WISE, the WISE receives the full funding available to licenced Providers and Employers if and when they deliver the support and employment outcomes sought by the NESM.
2. That this happens via ‘wage subsidy-plus’ agreements between WISEs and Providers, to pass on not only wage subsidies but any relevant Provider payments and Employment Fund payments when associated criteria are met. These should also have the following features:
   1. Have a standard form.
   2. Not be at a Provider’s discretion.
   3. Have the wage subsidy component linked to total hours of employment, within a three-year limit, with a requirement that the average hours of employment increase to an acceptable minimum over time.
3. That compliance relating to the Points Based Activity System not be required for WISE employees (or automatically logged as 100 points) given WISE employees work, and are engaged in wrap-around activities.

The NESM is a potential game-changing opportunity to fund the support job-focused social enterprises provide, for the benefit of disadvantaged job seekers, government and communities.

More info on the NESM can be found here.

Read ASENA’s response to the NESM Exposure Draft here

Have your say in the Victorian Government Social Enterprise Strategy 2021+ consultation process.

In October 2020, the Victorian Government conducted a public consultation on www.engage.vic.gov.au to inform the Social Enterprise Strategy 2021+.

SENVIC distilled the diverse views of the social enterprise community gathered from events and surveys in 2020 to prepare its submission.

The submission is available to download as a PDF or accessible Word version.

SENVIC continues to represent the social enterprise community on the Strategy Reference Group convened by the Hon Jane Garrett MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Jobs.

The Reference Group will be meeting regularly over the next few months to review submissions and support the Victorian Government to develop a new Social Enterprise Strategy.

SENVIC wants to hear from you.

Tell us what you think the Strategy 2021+ should contain by completing our survey now.