Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The measures contained in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015 demonstrate some of the mean nature we see coming from this government. It does nothing to address the youth unemployment crisis that we have looming in our country particularly in regional areas. We will see more young job seekers forced into poverty as a result of this bill.

Two of the measures I wish to highlight that will have an impact on people and force them into poverty include, firstly, that job seekers under the age of 25 will receive nothing for the first month. This is not trying to help people get off welfare; this is stopping people from having the means to get to their first job interview. This is stopping people who may have finished high school, may have finished university or may have finished TAFE from having the means to get to their first job interview. How do they pay their rent, how do they put food on the table and how do they buy that decent outfit, that suit, to go to a job interview?

Starving young people for the first month means that they cannot start actively looking for work because they do not have the means. What some of the government speakers have said, whether it be the minister in the consideration in detail stage of the bill we have before us or government backbenchers, is, 'That's okay, they can move back home.' It is a bit hard for regional kids to move home after studying in Melbourne and applying for jobs in Melbourne, travelling each day and paying for the train each day. It is a bit hard for country kids who have been studying in Bendigo to leave Bendigo to move back home and travel to that job every day. Whether you are living in a regional area trying to pay rent or you have moved home and have to pay for the train fare, you still need an income. In this bill, the government is trying to cut the first month, the month when you most need support when you are looking for work.

The government likes to suggest that all young job seekers are people who do not have qualifications. As the member for Herbert said when this debate first started, they have to get off the couch, stop eating cheezels and playing the Xbox. Not only is that insulting but also it shows a lack of understanding that this government has of people who are currently looking for work—as I mentioned, university students who have just finished their degree who are competing in a very tough market. To get their first job, they are going up against people with experience. I know from talking to young people in my electorate how hard it has been. They are excited, they have just finished university and months and months after they are still putting in job applications, they are still going to interviews but they cannot get a job. It is not through a lack of trying, it is not through a lack of fronting up to interviews; it is simply that there are not enough jobs available for the young people who are looking for work.

The cuts to youth allowance are also quite harsh, changing the age at which young job seekers qualify for Newstart, meaning that people between 22 and 24 will be pushed onto the newer lower rate of youth allowance. That is a cut of about $48 a week, almost $2,500 per year. There has been no testing to see what the cost of living is today. It is purely and simply a way to grab money from our youngest job seekers. The government seeks not to support but to punish young people who are looking for work. For some reason the government seems to think that it is cheaper for a single young person to run a household than it is for an older person to run a household. That is just not true. Rents are not determined by your age. Petrol prices are determined by your age. There is a fundamental unfairness in what the government is proposing. They are seeking to punish young people when they need our greatest support.

One of the areas which is really frustrating which government has failed to address is support for young job seekers in the regions. Youth unemployment in our regions is the highest it has been in a generation. In my own area of Bendigo it is 18.2 per cent. That is almost one in five young people who are unemployed and looking for work. That suggests that they are not lazy, as the government likes to portray, or that they are seeking welfare, or that they have gone straight from the school gate to welfare. That is not the case. When one in five young people are unemployed, it means that we do not have enough jobs. We are in the middle of a jobs crisis for young people. My generation will be the first of many generations that will have people who may never work, people who are unemployed right now who cannot get that first start, who cannot get the job experience which is vital so that they will get a job and hold a job.

Entry level jobs just do not exist today. They do not exist the way they did a generation ago. When people now in their 50s and 60s first left school, university or TAFE, there was always an entry-level job for them to go to. The Commonwealth Bank had cadetships and from the age of 16 you could start working in the Commonwealth Bank and work your way through. There were apprenticeships. In my own area of Bendigo, Thales, which manufactures the Bushmasters, a generation ago had 100 apprentices, 25 in each year level. Today it has two—two apprentices compared to 100 apprentices, meaning there are fewer apprenticeships available today in my part of the world. That is just one example and it has been replicated across our economy and our community.

Then there are the university students and graduates. Today it is hard for a teacher straight out of university to secure their first job. Today it is hard for arts and economics graduates to get government graduate positions because there are fewer of them today than there were a generation ago. The government's own policy towards employing young people leaves a lot to be desired. Right now less than 2.5 per cent of the entire Public Service, the entire number of Commonwealth government employees, are under the age of 25. This raises two problems. Firstly, where will our Public Service be in a generation, because we simply do not have enough young people starting now and working their way through? Secondly, what is this government as an employer actively doing about making sure there are good job opportunities for young Australians?

This government fails to have a concrete jobs plan that will generate real job opportunities for young people who are seeking work at the entry level when they leave school, at the TAFE level when they finish a TAFE certificate and at the graduate level when they leave university. Most particularly, this government is not doing enough to create and secure good jobs in our regions.

Young people in my electorate have spoken to me about their experiences when seeking work. It is important we consider these examples. It is important to consider what they have been through and how much harder it is going to be in the future if these measures go through for young people on unemployment benefits seeking a job.

Leigh is a 25-year-old job seeker who has had very little paid work since finishing his TAFE degree. In fact, his Job Network provider has been able to find him only one day of paid work—dismantling tents after the Elmore Field Day. Leigh made it very clear that he will move and travel for work. He is more than willing to. Even though he has an automotive TAFE diploma, he is willing to do whatever job is presented to him. So far all Leigh's Job Network provider and the community have been able to offer him is one day of work dismantling tents after the Elmore Field Day. It is, quite frankly, not good enough. It is not fair on Leigh that that is the only opportunity that has been presented to him.

Despite the lack of possible jobs Leigh's Job Network provider has offered him, he has applied for hundreds of jobs. He talked about how depressing it is to get another rejection. Sometimes he does not even get a rejection from the companies he has applied for jobs with. This is what it is like. This young person is very keen to work but he is caught at a time when the economy is not delivering real job opportunities for young Australians. Today there are simply not the entry-level jobs that existed a generation ago.

Kate is another young person who spoke to me about her experience of being unemployed and looking for work. Kate lives in Kyneton, which is in the lower part of my electorate. She has a university degree. When describing what it is like being an unemployed young person when there are limited job opportunities she said:

People don't like it when you are unemployed. They think you are lazy and wasting their tax paying dollars.

We hear again and again similar rhetoric from government members. She continued:

In the year that I have been unemployed I have applied for one hundred and seventy jobs. Less than ten bothered to reply.

Those 10 responses were all unsuccessful applicant emails sent out in bulk. She has not been able to secure an interview, despite sending out all these resumes.

Kate says that by far the hardest thing about being jobless is being on Centrelink payments. At the moment she gets roughly $316 per week. It barely covers the basics: $180 for rent, $20 for petrol, $45 for gas and electricity, $25 for the phone, $10 for car insurance and $5 for medication. That leaves her about $30 a week for everything else she may need—food, rego and clothes. That is on the current payments. Just imagine if she were 24 and were on less. Just imagine if tomorrow she found herself unemployed with no income. How would she pay her rent? How would Kate put petrol in her car? How would she pay for gas and electricity? She could not. This government will force her into poverty.

These are the experiences of two young people in my electorate who are already doing it tough trying to find work under the current system. What concerns and alarms me is the government have put no thought into how much harder it will be when they force people onto no income for a month and then force people on Newstart onto youth allowance and what impact that will have on their budget. The other part that concerns me is if a young person has a job and is made redundant and unemployed. These people have insecure work. They work in hospitality and catering. They are less likely to have any form of savings than people at the other end of their working life. They are not going to have money in their accounts to be able to cover the first month if they become unemployed. The government has put no thought into how those people will get help if they find themselves unemployed or underemployed because there has been a downturn in the cafe or because there has been a downturn in chicken manufacturing and they have had their hours cut. Any which way you look at this bill, this government is trying to force young people into poverty and blame young people for the circumstances in which they find themselves.

This bill continues the government's attack on young people and will leave young job seekers under the age of 25 with nothing to live on for a month. The bill will change the eligibility for Newstart, pushing young job seekers between 22 and 24 onto the lower rate of youth allowance. This is a cut of at least $48 a week, or almost $2,500 a year. The government is doing this knowing that it will be pushing lots and lots of young people into poverty when we should be encouraging them and supporting them to look for work.

More importantly, though, what cannot be ignored is this government's failure to have a genuine jobs plan that encourages and creates industry that employs young people. We have seen an explosion of insecure work. We have seen a rise in the number of overseas young people coming in and being able to get jobs at the expense of local young people. The number of young people who are employed is almost equal to the number of young backpackers we have in this country: a quarter of a million young people currently unemployed in this country, and a quarter of a million backpackers currently working here. They are from the same demographic: young people. We are seeing job after job go to these overseas workers at the expense of local workers. Yet what we are not seeing from this government is a genuine effort to clean that up and to create entry-level jobs for young people. All we are seeing is more attacks on people, with legislation that abandons young people and will force more of them into poverty. It is more rhetoric and less help for those who most need it.

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