Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I am so pleased that the gallery is full of young people, who will be eventually seeking their first position, their first employment opportunity. We always welcome young people to the centre of democracy in this nation. It is certainly appropriate that they are here for the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015.

The coalition, I need to assure those young people in the gallery, is providing strong and necessary support to help young job seekers get off welfare and into work. This legislation will introduce a revised four-week waiting period for young people accessing youth income support. It replaces the measure in last year's budget, which related to a six-month waiting period for those under 30 years of age. The message remains the same: you do not get to lean on the taxpayer if you are not prepared to have a go. You are not going to get a hand up or a handout if you are not prepared to have a go. It is so important that under the new measures in this bill, young people under the age of 25 have to wait four weeks in addition to the regular one-week waiting period before they can access what will be youth allowance up to the age of 25.

We want to send a strong message but we also want to make sure that that safety net is in place. So there is the hand up, there is the handout but you have to be prepared to have a go. We want to send a strong message which encourages our young people into work when they are job ready so they do not have the option of walking from the school gate and straight through the front door of the local Centrelink office.

The government wants our young people to know that choosing welfare is not a career choice. Minister Morrison has made it clearly known that we want young people to make the decision to work and that is why in this year's budget we are implementing a strategy to assist them. We are promoting a strong work-first approach amongst early school leavers. We are committed to helping young Australians overcome challenges and the barriers to participating in work and study. I cannot emphasise enough the handout is still there, the hand-up is still there but you have to be prepared to have a go.

In this year's budget, the coalition announced a $330-million youth employment strategy to help job seekers improve their chances of finding and keeping a job. It includes a number of measures to provide intensive support to vulnerable young people in the community, and there are genuine vulnerable young people in our communities—those who have mental health concerns, those who may have been long-term unemployed as well as young migrants. We are investing in this year's budget through the right mix of services to provide the opportunity to more young people to be job ready, to gain a job and, most importantly, to stay in a job.

This country wants to see young people in work and is encouraging them to work. What we are asking of our young people is perfectly realistic and is the process any unemployed person would be required to do in seeking to gain employment—that is, get a curriculum vitae together, work with a jobactive provider, apply for jobs, take employment opportunities which arise. That is certainly relevant in regional Australia because sometimes the perfect job that you want will not be there first time. It will not be there when you actually want it and sometimes you may have to get into the car and drive to the next town, drive to the next region to take that job. I encourage those young people out there listening is to take that job because you never know what door that might open.

This year's budget has a strong focus on helping more job seekers, especially young job seekers, to find employment. As part of the coalition's Growing Jobs and Small Business package, the cornerstone of the May budget, the Assistant Minister for Employment, the member for Cowper, announced a $330-million youth employment strategy to help young jobseekers improve their chances of finding and most importantly, retaining that job. Under the government's strategy, more than 45,000 young jobseekers will benefit annually to improve their employment prospects, to improve their chances of getting that job and retaining that job.

We recognise that in some parts of the country youth unemployment is double or triple the unemployment rate hovering around six per cent—that is, regional Australia and the western suburbs of our capital cities. By investing $330 million through new programs in the youth employment strategy, we are trying to give our young people an improved chance of finding a suitable job and it includes: $212 million for a new youth transition to work program; $106 million for intensive support to help those young job seekers at high risk of unemployment; $14 million to ensure early school leavers are suitably engaged in further study or work. It is why we have invested $5.5 billion in our small business package. The minister for small business continually pushes that point in question time, in parliament and right out in our communities because it is through small business where the vast amount of the jobs of the future will indeed come from.

We are taking the pressure off small business through tax cuts—the lowest company tax rate since 1967, down by 1.5 per cent to 28.5 per cent—and the immediate deductible asset write-offs and by slashing red tape. The 2015 budget is designed to lift business confidence in this country, and it is doing just that. It is doing just that in the Riverina. I am sure it is doing that in Maranoa. It is designed to grow the economy, to promote investment which will create and drive more employment opportunities, particularly—especially—for young people.

What is clear of the opposition is that Labor does not have a plan to tackle youth unemployment. In his 14 May budget-in-reply speech, the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Maribyrnong, did not mention—would you believe it?—a single new idea to help young job seekers and address youth unemployment. It used to be the farmers that were left out of the budget speeches and the budget-in-reply speech. Now it is the young unemployed. Not one practical measure was uttered by the member for Maribyrnong—not one. And, over the past year, Labor has stumped up just a measly $21 million through its Youth Jobs Connect program, which will assist only 3,000 job seekers.

The contrast between the opposition and the government could not be more stark. The coalition's Jobs and Small Business package will help 15 times the number of people and has 15 times the amount of funding that Labor has committed to tackle the youth jobless situation. If the Leader of the Opposition were serious about addressing youth unemployment, getting more young people into work, he would work constructively and support the government's plan to help job seekers move from welfare into work.

The coalition has listened to what people had to say following the measure introduced last year. We listened. We consulted closely. We needed to. The feedback they provided was that six months is too long—it was; it was way too long—and that 30 years is too high. We consulted. We did something that we never heard of in six years under Labor. Labor just came in and—wham, bam—threw out the policies, with no consultation with the community and no consultation with stakeholders. But we listened. And certainly we discovered—we were told in no uncertain manner—that six months is too long and that 30 years is too high. So we changed the policy. We understand that some young job seekers need a bit of extra help in order to get their foot in the door.

The message they sent is that we should be investing more to help young people into work, and that is what we are doing. Accordingly, that is what this bill seeks to do. Through the measures in this bill, the government is responding to each of the concerns which have been raised, supporting our young people to gain the experience and the skills they need to find sustainable employment and sending the very clear message that Centrelink is not a one-stop shop for our young people. We want people out of Centrelink. We want young people going into jobs, and we are putting the necessary mechanisms and processes in place to enable them to do just that. It is not the sort of country we want to run and not the sort of society we want to lead where young people go straight from school and straight in the Centrelink front door. We want to encourage Australians into work, particularly those young people, and we want to send the right message to young Australians.

The government proudly has a fully funded plan to grow the economy and to create opportunities for the future. When I say 'fully funded', how important is it that we absolutely know where the money is going to come from in the forward estimates to ensure that these plans work? That is another thing that, under Labor, we saw so little of. They were big on ideas but very, very short on delivery—certainly very short on ensuring that, even in the forward estimates, even beyond the forward estimates, they had the money to be able to make sure that their policies were fully funded. So much of it was predicated on the mining tax, on realising the rivers of gold that were supposed to come from that particular measure, and we all know what a flop that was.

When I speak of ideas, this was supposed to be Labor's year of ideas. The Labor Party has failed to develop—I am sad to say—any meaningful plan to tackle youth unemployment. But there is one person in this place, aside from all of those on this side of the House, who is helping to tackle unemployment, particularly among youth, and that is the member for Cowper, the Assistant Minister for Employment, the Deputy Leader of the House. He has backed the Jobs and Small Business package. It was announced in the budget. He has continually pushed it out in the electorate, out in the nation. If anybody knows the value of it, it is the member for Cowper. Fifteen times the people and 15 times the amount of funding that Labor has committed to tackling youth unemployment are in that measure.

In a 14 May media release—coincidently, on the same day that the member for Maribyrnong gave his ill-fated budget-in-reply speech—the member for Cowper said:

"The Abbott Government's Youth Employment Strategy provides $330 million to help young job seekers improve their chances of finding and keeping a job," …

"In stark contrast, Labor has no plan to tackle youth unemployment.

"In the past 12 months they have had a couple of talk-fests and put a measly $21 million on the table to help only 3,000 young people.

"Under the Coalition's Youth Employment Strategy the Government is spending $330 million to help around 45,000 young job seekers per annum to improve their job prospects.

I am not just quoting him because he is a fellow National Party member. I am quoting him because he is right. The member for Cowper, the Assistant Minister for Employment, wants to see young people in jobs because young people are our future. I know that in Cowper, unfortunately, young people are overrepresented on the unemployment queues. I know that the minister does not have just a macro idea of looking at this; he is also very engaged in his own local electorate.

Labor have showed that they lack a complete understanding of the budget, of sensible financial management and certainly, in this regard, of the needs of young job seekers. We can go to a table which shows that, in Labor's year of ideas on youth unemployment, the effects could not be more stark. On the coalition side we have $6.8 billion for jobactive. We have $1.2 billion for wage subsidies. We have $212 million for youth transition to work. We have $106 million for intensive support for vulnerable job seekers. We have $18.3 million for the National Work Experience program. We have $14 million for early school leavers. And what do we have on the opposite side? What do we have from Labor in the year of big ideas, the year of ideas on youth unemployment? We have two talkfests and $21 million.

We are over talkfests. The young people of Australia want to know that the adults are in charge, that the people entrusted with Treasury and with government, the people who were given support in September 2013, are getting on with the job of helping them into work. We want to help people who are transitioning or people who are either intergenerationally unemployed or have left school and find themselves in a fix and unable to find work, to help them in a proactive way into a job, not just for the short term but a job that will make a meaningful difference to their life in the long term because they will be able to retain it. This is why this bill is so important.

The measures in this bill, combined with our Jobs and Small Business package, provide strong support to assist young job seekers to get off welfare and into work. I certainly commend the actions of the member for Cowper, the Assistant Minister for Employment. I certainly commend the Abbott-Truss government for listening to the people, making sure that the measures were altered after we consulted with communities. We consulted with stakeholders and we listened, something those on the opposition benches did not do. Governments do not always get it right and we accepted that this measure needed altering—that is, because we listened. I sat here for three long years under the Gillard-Rudd administration where policies were brought in, where change was not made where it was so necessary and the key community stakeholders in whatever policy area were jacking up and making a fuss, but Labor never listened. This side of politics, the Liberal-Nationals, do listen. We have changed the policy and I commend the bill to the House.

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