The Human Services Minister says expectations on dole recipients are “miserably low”.

The Federal Government wants to impose tighter obligations on jobseekers, something Human Services Minister Alan Tudge covered at a recent address to the Sydney Insitute.

He said upcoming reforms would be aimed at making people on the Newstart Allowance a greater incentive to look for a job.

“According to a recent estimate, only about 4 per cent of those who fail to undertake a required activity without reasonable excuse receive a financial penalty,” Mr Tudge said.

Welfare recipients must fail in their job search for several months before their payments can be docked.

The Minister said those penalties were being imposed far too late.

“These illustrations that I have given are not examples of high expectations being set,” he said.

“On the contrary, they embody expectations that are miserably low.”

Mr Tudge said that over 400,000 people on the Newstart Allowance had no work-related mutual obligations to fulfil in return for their welfare payment.

He said the Government should raise expectations and tell people; “Yes, you are capable of doing this and yes, you can do it!”

“Over the next few months, Michaelia Cash, Christian Porter and I want to delve further into this and start the process of designing a new system built on higher expectations; where the standards are clear, fair and high, while still accommodating the fact that life throws up unexpected events,” he said.

The reforms will come as part of a broad shake-up to the $160-billion welfare system, with changes expected to be in line with the 2015 McClure Review.