Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to congratulate the member for Adelaide for putting this motion on the Notice Paper and giving us this opportunity to talk about the impact that the government’s unfair laws are having on young people and in particular young workers in Australia.

In the last few weeks, I have had the privilege of attending many awards nights at schools within my electorate. As I joined with families and teachers to congratulate the students on their achievements, I could not help but wonder how these young people will fare as they enter the labour market in the coming months. As the member for Adelaide points out in her motion, the class of 2006 will be the first to face working life under John Howard’s Work Choices regime.

There is no doubt that Work Choices is an attack on the rights of all workers. Workers have lost any protection from being unfairly sacked, and they are being forced onto AWAs that strip away conditions and reduce take-home pay. But, of course, young people are the most vulnerable under the Work Choices legislation. In many cases they lack the experience and knowledge to be able to bargain effectively with their employers over wages and conditions. They do not know what rights they have and are more likely to just accept what is offered without querying it. That was certainly the experience of Shane Denning when he started his first job after leaving school. We heard about Shane’s experience when it was raised in question time a couple of months ago. Shane found himself forced into being an independent contractor and as a result was being paid a much lower rate of pay, without any of the protections of leave entitlements or superannuation. Shane said that he signed the contract he was offered, even though it was for such low wages and conditions, because he thought he had no choice. He said;

When you are only 18 and you are trying to get a job you don’t ask a lot of questions, you just take what you get and you assume the law will be there to make sure you are not exploited.

Well, not anymore. One of the points the government consistently raises in defence of its unfair laws is the state of the economy and what it says is a strong labour market. According to the government, it doesn’t matter how badly you get treated or how poorly you are paid—you can just go out and get another job. That is supposed to reassure working families struggling under the burden of record household debt and rising inflation and interest rates. Even if that were true for the general workforce, it is certainly out of touch with the reality facing many young people.

The facts about youth unemployment paint a very different picture from the one that the government would have us believe. According to figures that I read today in the Mission Australia report, the unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 19 years is almost four times that of people aged over 25 years. In 2005 the unemployment rate for young people between the ages of 15 and 19 was 14.3 per cent. The other important statistic is the drop in full-time jobs. The Mission Australia figures indicate that we are moving to a situation where every second youth job will be part-time, even though we know that a significant proportion of part-time and casual workers want full-time employment.

So it is not the picnic for young people out there in the labour market that the government makes out. The level of youth unemployment and the lack of full-time jobs on offer place young people in a vulnerable position where they are forced to accept work on low wages and with poor conditions. This leaves them open to exploitation by employers, and the take-it-or-leave-it attitude encouraged by Work Choices provides no protection against such behaviour.

We are finding examples of these sorts of situations more and more. Just last week, on The 7.30 Report, we saw the story of Saima Tobin, who is a 17-year-old worker down in Melbourne. She was offered an AWA which reduced her rates of pay from $15 an hour on Sundays and $21 an hour on public holidays to a flat rate of $9.54 an hour for every day. Of course, she was told that if she did not sign the AWA she would not have a job. Similarly, there is Bill Schultze, a young man in Adelaide whose case the member for Adelaide has raised a number of times in question time, with very unsatisfactory answers from the Prime Minister. He was the young man who was also offered rates of pay in the AWA much lower than those he had been entitled to under the award. And Lorissa Stevens, a young woman in the Hunter Valley, was offered a dreadful AWA in the mining industry and again told: ‘Take it or leave it.’

Young people are standing up in increasing numbers to make their views known about this legislation. I want to congratulate the thousands of people who came out for the Work Choices rally in my electorate of Capricornia last Thursday to tell the government that the time to vote against these laws is coming. (Time expired)

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