Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the issue of the Youth Transition to Work program. I can reassure the shadow minister not only that we are investing $6.8 billion in a new Job Active employment services system, which is going to deliver better services to job seekers and better services to employers, but also that this program forms part of our $330 million youth employment strategy. The member will be pleased to hear that it is new money. It is money from the budget. It is additional funding to Job Active. It is part of our commitment to help young people from welfare into work.

The good member asked about the issue of the selection process for organisations to be involved in this. We are currently looking at options for the most efficient, effective way in which we can select participants to deliver the services under the transition to work program. I am certainly taking views from community organisations on the design and final details of the program we have in mind. It is a program that has a different focus from Youth Connections. This program has a focus on getting young people actually into work. That is the very important difference. The cohort of young people who will participate in the transition to work program will be selected on the basis that, with appropriate services and appropriate wraparound services—with the types of services that will be delivered under this program, such as mentoring, coaching and pre-employment training—we will be getting them to the point where they can make that important journey from the first rung of the ladder into employment.

It is vitally important that we do not continue the age-old process of endless training for training's sake—endless courses that were not delivering the important job outcome that we as a government want for our young people and that young people want themselves. There is nothing more debilitating for a young person than to participate in a program only to find out on exiting that program that there is no future coming out of it. So we are about a program that will deliver a job. Youth Transition to Work is an important part of that strategy. It does it in a number of ways. As I said, there is mentoring and coaching. Communications skills development—how a young person is going to participate in a job interview and what the employer is expecting of that young person—will give the young person confidence to go to a job interview and to know that they will have the support they need to get by in the workforce. Literacy and numeracy skills for those young people who need it are vitally important. Also teamwork skills—important new skills. And there is access to work experience. Transition to work will fit in with a suite of programs to deliver a total service that will get more young people into work.

Another service that the program may be providing for some young people in certain circumstances, and one that I know will be popular with many young people, is assistance in some cases to get a drivers licence. For many young people the lack of a drivers licence can be a major impediment to getting into work. Also there is support for young people in taking up apprenticeships. It is a wide range of measures as part of a wraparound service targeted at young people who may not necessarily get the job they need through the conventional assistance that is offered under Job Active. This is a supplement to Job Active. A young person who participates in transition to work will be deemed to be completing whatever mutual obligation requirements that young person has. It is a great new program. It is one that has a work focus—as opposed to Youth Connections, which lacked a work focus. That was a major criticism of that program. At the end of the program the young person was not necessarily any closer to getting a job. We are overcoming that barrier. We have a work focus. We have a program that will use community groups to deliver outcomes and deliver support for young people. We will be looking at placing programs in areas where we can have that continuum: entering the program, being assisted and having their confidence built with a view to, at the end of the day, an employer being available that will be able to offer a job outcome to young people. It is all about getting people on that journey into work. Work is vitally important. This is a work-first approach in transition to work. We have thought this through very carefully. We are consulting widely with community groups to deliver the program. It will be, I think, a game changer for many young people.

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