KYM DEVLIN, JOBSEEKER: And I see all these people on the train, all going to work and it's: why is it hard for me? It makes me wonder why, why, why is it easier for them to get a job and not me? What makes me different? Why can't I have that? Why can't I have the help I need to get a job? It's demeaning; depressing, even.

LINTON BESSER, REPORTER: Does it ever just get too much…?

KYM DEVLIN: Every day. Every day.

LINTON BESSER: Elizabeth. The northern suburbs of Adelaide, home to the most extreme urban unemployment in the country: almost one in three people. This is what life looks like when the jobs run out.

KYM DEVLIN: I want to work and I want to get back in the workforce, but it's hard to get a job with an eight-year gap in your résumé. Centrelink is not the ideal pay cheque. It's not something you choose, so...

LINTON BESSER: Unemployment hasn't been this high in Australia for 12 years and the Government has a program to get people back into work. It's called Job Services Australia and it costs $1.3 billion a year.

But does it work?

Tonight on Four Corners we reveal the corruption at the heart of a scheme designed to help some of our most vulnerable - and how it's turning the unemployed into a commodity.

BILL MITCHELL, PROF., ECONOMIST, UNI. OF NEWCASTLE: It started to reveal corruption and, you know, fraud.

RUPERT TAYLOR-PRICE, CEO, JN SOLUTIONS: Hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more - millions of dollars in some cases -, has been reclaimed by the Government. No-one that I know of has ever had their business sanctioned, even when they have found systemic fraud.

DAVID KEMP, EMPLOYMENT MINISTER (December 1997): Mr Speaker, today marks the start of the most significant reforms in 50 years to improve services for job seekers and employers and get more unemployed people into jobs.

LINTON BESSER: In 1998, the Commonwealth Employment Service - or CES as it was known - was effectively privatised.

PETER SHERGOLD, DR, FMR SECRETARY, DEPT. OF EMPLOYMENT: I think it was probably the most innovative measure in terms of public administration that happened during the Howard years.

ANNOUNCER (TV ad, 1998): On May 1st, the CES will be replaced with a better way to help get unemployed people jobs. Over 300 private, community and government organisations competing to connect the right person to the right job. The new Job Network.

LINTON BESSER: Today it's called Job Services Australia and it boils down to this: when you're on the dole, it's compulsory to report to an employment agency. They're owned by charities as well as for-profit operators.

When you arrive, you're classified by your level of disadvantage. If you didn't finish school, don't have access to transport, have a mental illness or a substance abuse problem, or if you're Indigenous, you're deemed harder to place in work.

The worse off you are, the more your agency makes.

When you walk in the door, it's paid up to $587. Find a job and the agency claims up to $385. Stay in the job for three months: up to $2,900. Hit the six month mark: up to $2,900 more.

Along the way, the Government allocates up to $1,100 to improve your chances of getting a job. This covers things like learning to drive a car, new clothes for a job interview or even wage subsidies to make you more attractive to an employer. There are funds for marketing and training - and on it goes.

In all, the program has cost taxpayers almost $18 billion since 1998.

DAVID THOMPSON, CEO, JOBS AUSTRALIA: A system that's got so many billions of dollars floating around in it, so many billions of taxpayers' dollars, there will always be - or at least the possibility - that opportunists will be there, trying to push the barriers.

LINTON BESSER: The incentive to push these barriers is exacerbated by a simple arithmetic: there are just not enough jobs for the unemployed.

In Australia there are about 780,000 unemployed people competing for only 150,000 job vacancies.

BILL MITCHELL: It's an impossible task. There's not enough jobs to go around. You can't make people search for jobs that aren't there - and that's the dilemma of the whole system.

PETER SANDEMAN, REV., CEO, ANGLICARE SA: Well, Job Services Australia: the whole system presumes that there are jobs available for people. And, of course, in many parts of Australia that's just not true.

LINTON BESSER: Here in Elizabeth, there are whole streets where they say no one has worked for a generation.

KYM DEVLIN: My Mum didn't work, but I'm one of five siblings. She was a single mum too. My Dad and my Mum split up before I was born, so my Mum did the best she could.

Like I said, I'm one of five, so I guess my Mum didn't really have the opportunity to get out there and show us, you know, teach us even confidence and what you need to... the skills to work.

LINTON BESSER: Established in the 1950s for a booming manufacturing sector, 60 years later these areas of Adelaide have fallen by the wayside as the global economy has found cheaper labour elsewhere.

KYM DEVLIN: I've thrown myself back out there and tried to pick my life back up and make it for the better. I have my daughter. You know, I don't want her to live a horrible life. I want her to have better than what I had.

LINTON BESSER: Kym Devlin hasn't had a job in eight years and is signed up with Max Employment. Kym has been obligated to visit Max roughly every fortnight for the past two-and-a-half years.

Despite this, she says she hasn't been put forward for a single job interview.

KYM DEVLIN: It's so frustrating because it's been going on for a couple of years. You get treated like you don't matter. You know, you're just... you're just another name on their list that they get to cross off so that when it comes down to it, they can hand back and say, "Yep, look, I've filled my quota," whether you get help or not. It's, it's... it's demeaning. It's... it's frustrating.

LINTON BESSER: Today Kym is going into Max Employment for another meeting, hoping for a breakthrough.

But what is Max?

The agency is actually one arm of a giant multinational that is traded on the US stock market. Despite a controversial history in the welfare sector in America, it has come to dominate Australia's jobs program.

In her meeting, Kym discovered the résumé Max sends out on her behalf was riddled with errors.

(to Kym Devlin) So what happened? Did you have to tell your story again?

KYM DEVLIN: Yeah. Update a résumé. My name was spelt wrong.

LINTON BESSER: Really?

KYM DEVLIN: Oh yeah. Um, there's jobs in here that - wrong years. Some of them weren't even added. It had my Grandma on there, which - she passed away last year - as a reference. So, a mess. My Business Admin and Business Cert II and III weren't even on my résumé.

LINTON BESSER: So, sorry: the courses they helped put you through...

KYM DEVLIN: Yeah, they put me through...

LINTON BESSER: They hadn't put on your résumé and...?

KYM DEVLIN: Nope. There was nothing on my résumé about them and that- I finished those last year.

LINTON BESSER: Is there any evidence at all that they have put you forward for jobs in that area?

KYM DEVLIN: Nope. Nope.

Oh, I've been trying to get them to transfer me...

LINTON BESSER: Kym doesn't realise it but she has been "parked."

In employment parlance, this is what happens to thousands of jobseekers when agencies put them in the "too-hard basket."

BILL MITCHELL: They would take their first fee from the Government for taking them on and then they would quickly work out that it was going to be, cost them too much resources to get them skilled, so they'd just park them and forget about them.

RUPERT TAYLOR-PRICE: In the industry it's called "parking", where you get a jobseeker in, you don't think there's much prospects of getting them an outcome, so you essentially try and do the minimum amount of compliance activities that are required with them.

LINTON BESSER: So how many people are being parked and how many are getting real help?

Rupert Taylor-Price is in a unique position to answer these questions. As a software provider to many agencies, he has access to the vast volumes of data that flow between the Government and its contractors.

RUPERT TAYLOR-PRICE: I'd say probably about one in 10 people have sort of a significant interaction with the system that results in them... in a better chance of gaining employment. It's a bit of luck, really. It's if you get the right service provider at the right time, you get the right consultant.

Sometimes, ah, someone will feel very passionate about a jobseeker and put a lot of energy in, but naturally the contract doesn't give the resource required in many cases to, to reform someone's life back to employment.

LINTON BESSER: There may not be the money to reform the lives of the long-term unemployed, but maybe that's not the point anyway.

If an unemployed person fails to attend a meeting at their agency or fulfil other obligations, their payments are suspended.

It's what they call "breaching" and some argue that this is the scheme's true purpose.

BILL MITCHELL: That's been a scandal in Australian history: the breaching, where, where an unemployed person is fined. That is, they lose their income support if they don't satisfy certain, ah, attendance rules and documentation rules and what- and, you know, record keeping and all of that.

There's a whole industry of punishment and coercion and monitoring of the unemployed when there's not enough jobs anyway.

LINTON BESSER: This is exactly what's happened to Kym. But in her case, she says she's been breached unfairly many times - including when her consultant failed to show up for their scheduled appointment.

KYM DEVLIN: Half the time, my payment gets cut off because they say I haven't attended and get marked down as though I haven't attended. And Centrelink will call through and see what's happened and I'll, I'll tell them I've been there and it has just come down to a case of a few times that the secretary hasn't handed in the sign-in sheet. You know, like they literally barely even notice you're there.

LUKE HARTSUYKER, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT: We as a nation need to get more Australians into work...

LINTON BESSER: Four Corners requested an interview with the Minister who oversees the scheme, Luke Hartsuyker. He declined. But the public servant who ushered in the program 16 years ago, Peter Shergold, says that despite its flaws, he believes the program is working.

PETER SHERGOLD: I know many fine members of Job Services Australia who are working very hard to find people employment. But overall there is no doubt to me that it has been pretty effective at helping people get into work.

LINTON BESSER: Ninety minutes out of Sydney, we meet another jobseeker who went through Job Services Australia.

His employment agency was the for-profit company called ORS Group. It's a Perth-based outfit with more than 60 offices around the country. Last year its turnover was $66 million.

LINTON BESSER: Can you list for me the number of job interviews that ORS organised for you in the time that you were there?

ADAM MATCHETT: Yeah, well I can list it: um, there was none. They didn't give me one job interview.

LINTON BESSER: In 2010, Adam Matchett was a young carpenter living on the New South Wales central coast. But one night tragedy struck when he was hit by a car.

In a coma for 19 days, Adam was lucky to survive. But when he woke up, everything had changed.

ADAM MATCHETT: I had everything planned out. But that all of a sudden was just taken away in an instant. I was in hospital for around about three to four months. Then I was in a rehab centre for brain injuries. I was in there for about six months. And then after that I tried to go back to work as a carpenter, but couldn't do that from the physical injuries.

I couldn't do a lot of things. Holding a bit of timber up there for architraves or something, I couldn't, I didn't have enough strength to hold the gun up there, so I'd swap hands and hold the timber up there, but I didn't have enough strength to hold the timber up there either.

LINTON BESSER: Adam was forced onto unemployment benefits. He had to rebuild his life and find a new career.

ADAM MATCHETT: It's like, yeah, starting again from scratch. Well, I'd never been on Newstart or Centrelink or anything like that and it was sort of a bit depressing getting help for the first time. But I wanted to have a go and, um, I had no skills, so I needed help.

They sent me to this job a-agency, ORS, and I thought that was a great thing. I thought they were going to help me to get new skills and all that sort of stuff.

LINTON BESSER: But that didn't happen.

After 10 months with ORS, Adam found himself a job at a wine bar called BPO.

Although ORS had not found him the position, it was still entitled to claim fees as a result of Adam's success - but it had to obtain his signature to do so.

LINTON BESSER: When is the last time you think you ever signed any documents with ORS Group?

ADAM MATCHETT (sighs): Um... the last time... well, I know I spoke to them after I had a job but the last time I would've sat down with them and signed anything would've been before the date that I got the job because now that I had a job I didn't have any reason to go in there.

LINTON BESSER: So can I show you this document? Have a look at that. That's a form that's dated six months after you started at BPO. Do you recognise that document?

ADAM MATCHETT: I remember filling out a form like this but I can't say it was six months later.

The thing is: they'd send me these forms. I'd fill out the parts, like I'd put me name and BPO and my signature. They'd say, "Oh, don't worry about the rest. We'll do that."

LINTON BESSER: So they were asking you to sign blank forms?

ADAM MATCHETT: Pretty much yes. Well, yeah, they were.

LINTON BESSER: The confusion in Adam's paperwork is not an isolated case.

His form was among a suite of internal documents obtained by Four Corners that ORS has used to claim thousands of dollars from the taxpayer.

We tracked down some of those former ORS clients whose signatures appeared on the documents.

LINTON BESSER: So do you think you signed that?

MONICA KOPP: It doesn't really look like me. Jesus, I don't know, to be honest. I don't think so.

LINTON BESSER: Is that your signature?

MONICA KOPP: I don't think so.

LINTON BESSER (to Linda Edwards): Linda, have a look at that...

LINTON BESSER: In some cases, the job details appeared completely fabricated.

LINDA EDWARDS: It says, "I, Linda Edwards, confirm I commenced employment with…" and I don't know who these, this...

LINTON BESSER: What does it say? It says...

LINDA EDWARDS: Samaritans Accommodation - is that what it says? I've never heard of Samaritans Accommodation, so I'm not really sure what that means.

AIMEE TESTER: Yeah, that's not my writing.

LINTON BESSER: So do you think...

AIMEE TESTER: At all. Yeah, I don't write like that. I don't write in running writing. The dates are definitely wrong, 'cause I was working already. And the company name's spelt wrong. Don't even think that's actually my signature, 'cause I don't write it like that.

LINTON BESSER: Do you want to show me one? Here, why don't you do a signature on here.

(Aimee writes her signature in a notebook)

LINTON BESSER: Wow. That's completely different.

AIMEE TESTER: Yep. (laughs) Yeah.

LINTON BESSER: So they've forged your signature?

AIMEE TESTER: Yeah.

LINTON BESSER: So the whole thing is a complete forgery?

AIMEE TESTER: Yeah.

LINTON BESSER (to Arwen Norbury): Just have a look at that. Do you recognise that document?

ARWEN NORBURY (reads): Really! Really?

LINTON BESSER: What do you think's happened there?

Arwen Norbury: I'm shocked, 'cause I didn't fill this in. And you know what? That's how I do my signature but that's not even on the line. I cross over on the line so they've, they've Photoshopped that in.

And that is my signature, but it doesn't hit the line and I can tell you for a fact that I write over the line, how my "A" goes, so they've, that's fraud.

LINTON BESSER: Dozens of ORS claims have been examined by Four Corners and more than 70 per cent of them relied on suspect paperwork, with clients repeatedly disputing the company's records.

Hours were bumped up, wages were inflated and, in several cases, the claim forms appear to have been forged.

Now a company whistleblower says such fraud is rampant and that ORS routinely lodges false claims worth millions of dollars.

We can't reveal his identity and have replaced his voice.

ORS WHISTLEBLOWER (voiceover): I would say about 80 per cent of claims that came through had some sort of manipulation on them, from a forged signature with everything completely falsified to manipulation of a date or the hours worked.

LINTON BESSER: How many wage tables have you seen manipulated or that you know have been manipulated?

ORS WHISTLEBLOWER (voiceover): I couldn't even give you a number. It'd be in the thousands.

LINTON BESSER: He says details