Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The amendments in the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015 are obviously aimed at the issues around youth unemployment in Australia. Unemployment is an absolute tragedy, particularly long-term unemployment, which can lead to intergenerational unemployment. The outcomes for people who live their life without a job are terrible, pretty much across the board.

Areas of my electorate at the moment are suffering unemployment above 10 per cent. In the Upper Spencer Gulf region we saw the announcement last week around the closure of the Alinta power station. There are a number of issues with the Olympic Dam BHP mine at the moment. There are lay-offs with the closures of iron ore mines run by Arrium. These things have all contributed, and youth unemployment is in excess of 20 per cent in this region. If people spend three to five years of their young lives unemployed, it is highly likely that it will be a life sentence and that that will be the outcome for the rest of their life: they will spend most of it unemployed. We simply must do everything we possibly can to try to break that pattern and give our kids a chance.

There are many reasons why kids cannot find work. Some of the speakers, including the member for Lalor, who has just departed the chamber, have raised the issue of unemployment levels. That is one of the very important ones and it is not to be underestimated. I realise that in absolute terms there are not enough jobs to employ every person in Australia who is looking for work at the moment, and that is why the government is concentrating on a jobs package, a small business package, in the budget, to stimulate the economy and create more work. Last month's unemployment figures in South Australia were nothing short of disastrous. The one thing that South Australia is leading the nation in at the moment is unemployment—7.6 per cent. It is a great concern and a disgrace, because the rest of Australia, as tough it might be out there, is not going that badly.

But I would like to focus on the jobs that we cannot fill in Australia. For instance, there are currently 198,000 457 visa holders in Australia. Of course, some have high skill levels and they are here because we cannot provide that skill set from our workforce. But many do not, and they are filling jobs that we cannot get Australians to do. There are also tens of thousands of international workers across the nation on a variety of visas like regional work visas. For instance, our abattoirs are largely staffed with overseas-sourced workers, as are our taxis. A part of Australia that I have some responsibility for, outback Australia, would cease to operate if it were not for overseas workers. Our tourist industry in the outback of Australia is staffed predominantly by people who have come from overseas. Even in the agriculture industry itself, a substantial number of our shearers come from New Zealand. And good on them. We could not get by without them, and I have nothing against these people coming to Australia to work.

Any of us in the chamber who are of the right group would remember Professor Julius Sumner Miller. He would ask, 'Why is it so?' It is a great conundrum. It is a great question. Why can we not get Australians to work in these jobs? Many of them are good-paying jobs. Australia was built on the prospect of 'having a go'. Post World War II migrants flooded to the country and went wherever the work was. I remember a time a few years back when I was in the Blue Mountains on a bus trip. I got the job of sitting up with the driver and I met Tom, the Italian bus driver. I said: 'Tom, that can't be your name. What's your real name?' He said, 'It's Tommaso,' and I said, 'Well, I shall call you Tommaso for the rest of the day.' And I did. We got on very well and he spoke of his life and how, when he came to Australia, he had gone wherever the work was. We discovered, in fact, that he had helped build the Port Pirie television station transmitter that I can see out of my office window when I am in Port Pirie. He had worked on that, because he went where the work was.

I have another short anecdote, if I might. I often say that in many ways remote Indigenous communities are the canary in the coalmine when it comes to assessing the impact of passive welfare. Generally, what happens there is exactly what will happen in the rest of our communities if we follow the same pathway. It is recognised how much damage is being done in these communities by the one-way welfare deal. Australia will support community members to stay at one point doing not very much, or very little, for as long as they like with no obligation. That is poison for those people and it is poison for the rest of us.

At Kenmore Park I met an older Aboriginal gentleman. He had two ladies with him—his wife and I think it was her sister. He told me of his life. He said: 'I had to go where the work was. I logged forests in the south-east of South Australia, I logged in Western Australia, I picked bananas in Queensland and I went shearing. I went wherever the work was and then I returned to the land and my family. Then when I needed to work again I left.' He lamented and said, 'We can't get the young kids to do the same today.' It is the same in our mainstream societies. So many have lost the resolve and the determination, because we support them to stay where they are and we support them to make the wrong decision, not just for Australia but also for themselves.

These amendments seek to at least send a message. The government tried to send a stronger message last year, and we accept we cannot get that legislation through the Senate. So we have returned this year with reform lite, if you like. Some reform is better than none. These amendments now propose a one-month waiting period in which young adults under the age of 25 who are job ready—that is, they live in an area where there are good job opportunities, have reasonable literacy and numeracy skills and have recent work practice and therefore are the kinds of people who should be able to find work if it is available—cannot access youth allowance or special allowance for four weeks, if they fall within these very restricted and generous guidelines. It is a very moderate message, but it is a message nonetheless. The message is that this nation wants its young people to make a success of their lives. To do that we want them to start out their post-school life with a job—any job—because any work is better than none. There are better health outcomes, there are better mental health outcomes, it is better for the pocket and it is certainly much better on the young workers' CVs when they go to look for another job. We need to put ourselves in the position perhaps of a potential employer. If someone comes in with a CV that shows that they have not worked for five years, regardless of their skill set and regardless of how much they may have attempted to educate themselves and improve their literacy, it is highly unlikely that they will land the job if there are other people available. The employer will want to know:, 'What have you been doing for the last five years? Why haven't you been working?'

If a school leaver spends the first three or five years unemployed, that is likely to be the pattern of their life. So the message to these kids is to have a go, chase down the opportunities and take the non-preferred job to get a start. By all means, look for another job when you already have one and upgrade your prospects, but the message is, 'Don't throw in your job before you have a new start.' I listened to the member for Lalor and she said, 'If this person loses their job, then they will lose their entitlement.' That is not the way the legislation will, in fact, work. If they lose their job for a good reason—for example, if they have been made redundant or if a business has closed—then of course they will not be subject to these tests. But if they have resigned from their job or been fired for poor performance, then they will be, because we want those people to persist at their jobs. If they do not like their job, they need to work on trying to get a new and better one.

This is good reform delivering moderate savings to the budget bottom line. Most importantly, it is sending a moderate message to our children: it is in the nation's interest and, more particularly, your interest to take your opportunities. I will conclude my remarks there.

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