Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I want to raise a couple of issues with the minister. One, in particular, is about local employment coordinators. The minister would be aware that the former government had local employment coordinators in 21 priority-employment areas in the country. They were areas that had issues regarding structural adjustment and/or high unemployment.

I would particularly ask the minister some questions relating to why a decision was made to extend the Geelong employment coordinator, and why Geelong is now the only area in Australia that has a local-employment coordinator. Indeed, they did make some decisions to extend it, but this budget then extended it for another two years at a cost of $1.3 million. The department at the time responded to a question on notice saying that the government recognised that the Geelong region was experiencing a period of significant structural adjustment with a number of large-scale business closures, including Ford and Alcoa, all of which this side of the House has no argument with—and it is true.

But I guess the issue would be: what about those other areas in Australia, particularly those regional areas that have high unemployment, and what specific programs does the government have in place to deal with that? In the last lot of estimates when the government was asked about this, we got some different responses as to why Geelong had this extension. There was some talk about there being a case for Geelong because of the significant retrenchments. This is taken from the transcript of Ms Kidd's evidence. We also had Ms Leon say that a view was taken to give the Geelong program, which had only been in place a short time, the chance to form local employment networks and support, so it had been extended a bit further. So, apart from all of that, we are a bit concerned that a whole range of other areas in Australia might need a local employment coordinator.

If you look at the regional areas of high unemployment across Australia, let's say the top 10, they include areas like Wide Bay, Murray, Hunter Valley, Logan, Beaudesert, Richmond, Tweed, Townsville, New England, Mandurah, the south-east of Tasmania, my home state, the north of Adelaide, north of Moreton Bay, the west of Melbourne, Newcastle and Lake Macquarie. When you talk about high unemployment, all those areas come before Geelong. My question is: why aren't these areas also getting local employment coordinators or extensions of them? I asked the minister very seriously: was this because the member for Corangamite was to appear on Q&A and needed an announcement, or was it much more serious than that? What analysis did the government do to come up with an extension for Geelong and not for any of these other regions that are suffering from significantly high unemployment? This information is according to the ABS. If you look at average unemployment over 12 months, that is the order of areas. The communities in those areas are struggling and the government is sitting by. It is dealing with Geelong, which is a good thing, but it is not dealing with those other areas. As a Tasmanian who has a large number of regions struggling with high unemployment, there does not appear to be a great plan for them from the government.

We heard previously today about the wage subsidy and its flexibility. I would ask the minister about the wage subsidies and the way that the government has structured them. Wage subsidies were very flexible when they were part of the Employment Pathway Fund. Certainly the feedback I got from employment providers was that they loved the flexibility of the Employment Pathway Fund. Some providers are concerned about the structures which the government is putting around its new subsidies. Some subsidies are already in place, such as Restart and the Tasmanian Jobs Program, and others will start on 1 July, such as the youth unemployment wage subsidy and the long-term wage subsidy. Providers are concerned that they will lose some of the flexibility that they had in the Employment Pathway Fund.

I would ask the minister about the flexibility of the new 'flexible fund', which is what it is being called—the $1.2 billion fund. Can the minister confirm that the wage subsidies will have the same targets that were indicated when they were announced? Is the government going to monitor whether those targets will be reached and whether the flexibility that providers had when they were part of the Employment Pathway Fund will remain as part of the flexible funding pool for the wage subsidies?

See this speech in context