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

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015, which is a dynamic component of the 2015-16 budget. In the recent budget, the Abbott government unveiled the Growing Jobs and Small Business package, the biggest small business package in Australia's history. This is a vital policy, illustrating the Abbott government's commitment to create jobs and address unemployment—which, as we have just heard, is higher in the bush, such as in my electorate of Durack, than in metropolitan areas. I am very pleased that Australia's biggest small business package has now received parliamentary approval.

After years of glossy posters and rhetoric, the last government left little but a massive debt, a legacy they will hold forever. But the Abbott government, I am pleased to say, is fair dinkum about getting Australia's economy back on track. Since being elected, the Abbott government has created around a quarter of a million new jobs, including 42,000 last month alone. Of the 42,000 new jobs created last month, I am pleased to say that 29,800 were taken up by females in part-time roles. The economy is responding to the strong economic management by the Abbott government, with unemployment dropping by 22,000 last month. This is in stark contrast to the 519,000 jobs lost under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, where they had no respect for small business, the engine room of our economy, having six small business ministers in six long years. I am proud to be a part of a government that is committed to creating jobs for Australians. As we found out last Thursday, and as I have said, there were an extra 42,000 jobs last month, adding to about a quarter of a million new jobs created since the government was elected in September 2013. I am particularly happy with the rise of part-time jobs for females as, according to the last census, unemployment among women was at 4.4 per cent Durack—go Durack girls!

This government is dedicated to improving the employability of unemployed Australians, investing $18.3 million in additional work experience places. This will provide on-the-job experience and immediate contact with a potential employer. I have met many young adults in Durack who have gained a job following work experience, either with the work experience employer or with a different employer. We all know this can be a very vicious cycle when trying to get your foot on the employment ladder. Employers want employees to have experience, but, without having a job, how can a young person get the experience that employers require? This bill includes a measure which will make job seekers more employable. In what must be music to the ears of small business owners, this measure reduces the costs of employing new staff. This measure will bring job seekers and employers together. The Growing Jobs and Small Business package has been welcomed in Durack amongst both job seekers and employers. It will assist businesses to prosper and to take on the four sectors of the workforce which I would like to see thrive in Durack: the young job seekers, the mature workers, the parents and the long-term unemployed. I call on the opposition to have a heart, support the bush, pass this bill unamended and not play politics with this important measure. I was particularly offended by some of the comments by the member for Bendigo. If the member looked a little closer, she would see that this government is serious about helping young Australians, especially those in the bush, get the skills that they need to secure employment.

Under this bill, young people will become more employment ready than before. From 1 July next year, people under the age of 25 who are the most job ready will be able to apply for Newstart and will have the four-week period where they will be able to get their application skills up to date for the modern workforce. During this period, young people will have the opportunity to develop an up-to-date resume, agree to a job plan, create a job seeker profile on the JobSearch website, and also meet with a Job Active profiler who is going to help them secure employment. This has been welcomed by young people seeking a job in my vast electorate of Durack. Our government has also made a further $8.1 million available in emergency relief funding to provide assistance to job seekers who, through no fault of their own, have slipped through the cracks of mainstream education and therefore need that little bit of extra care and assistance to be job ready.

Members of both sides of the House in the past will have heard how much I value education. I am particularly passionate about making it easier for students from the bush to access tertiary education. With this in mind, I am very pleased that students will not have to wait four weeks to be eligible for youth allowance to be able to continue with their tertiary education. Young people who return to school or take up full-time vocational education or university study will not be subject to the four-week waiting period, which is great news for the over 20,000 people aged between 15 and 24 in the electorate of Durack, which make up a whopping 12 per cent of my electorate.

Job seekers who have been deemed as having significant barriers to finding a job will not have to wait either. There are many who will not be subject to the four-week waiting period. People who are living with a disability will not have to wait. Women who are pregnant will not have to wait. People who have served this period in the last six months will not have to wait. People who have left state care in the last 12 months will also not have to wait the four-week waiting period.

This measure is fair and I call on the opposition to support this bill and thereby support young people in the bush. As many in Durack know, it is alarming that unemployment in regional Australia hit a 12-year high earlier this year. But country people are not that fussy when it comes to getting jobs because country people cannot be fussy; they simply have to take what they can get. There are not the same opportunities for people who live in the regions as there are in metropolitan areas. That is why this bill is important. It ensures all job seekers accept any suitable job, not just one that they would like to have. In this day and age, and in the circumstances, I think this is a fair and targeted measure.

Unemployment benefits are for those who are looking for work and finding it hard to secure employment. It is not for ever and ever a taxpayer funded payment with no end in sight. This is not a heartless government. As part of this bill, we will be funding intensive support trials for vulnerable job seekers. I am proud to say we are also providing new support for youth with mental health conditions. On top of this, we will provide new support for vulnerable young migrants and refugees, and support parents preparing to go back into the workforce.

This bill will go a long way to bridging the gap in employment opportunities between regional and metropolitan Australians. These measures hit squarely on the head a key issue I am passionate about which is getting young people into the workforce. The bill assists youth not just in getting a job but also in starting a career. I am proud to be a member of the Abbott government and proud to be supporting this measure. This bill is a vital component of the biggest small business package in Australia's history.

This is part of the same package delivered by the Abbott government, which has presided over the creation of a quarter of a million new jobs in the past two years. Durack will benefit from this bill. Job seekers—young, mature and new to the workforce—will reap the benefits of this government's plan; so too will small businesses, our largest employer base and the backbone of our economic society. I commend this bill to the House.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to join the debate on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. This bill will see job seekers under 25 with nothing to live on for one month. The bill sees this government pressing ahead with changes to the eligibility age for Newstart, pushing job seekers who are between the ages of 22 and 24 onto the lower youth allowance. This is a cut of at least $48 a week, $2½ thousand a year, for young unemployed people. It distresses me to think that we have a government that is so intent on knowingly pushing young people into poverty.

It is particularly nasty for young people in my community, a community that has higher than average unemployment generally and very high youth unemployment. These figures do not reflect on a community where young people do not want to work, contrary to the assertions of those opposite and from some comments made by the member for Durack, suggesting that if they return to study they will not have to wait four weeks. I remind the House that the intention of this government, through its apprenticeships program, is that if they return to study they will go into debt. If they do a tertiary qualification in higher education, the intention is they will go into debt. In my electorate, it leaves us with a sinking feeling that there are some safety nets in here for those families who can afford to take on that debt. In my area families are reluctant to go into debt, so this is all bad news.

I am reminded of a conversation I had recently in my electorate office with a very, very concerned resident. He and his wife both worked all their lives. Their eldest child finished year 12, so had met all the things we want a young person to do. We want them to complete school. She is an active person in the community, playing representative basketball. She kept herself fit. She studied hard and got that VCE. At the end of the education process, like many of her classmates, she found it difficult to find a job. When suggested she go to Centrelink, she was mortified because she did not want to become someone reliant on the government. But when told about a job seeker number and that that was where you had to get them, off she went. He relayed to me how mortified he was, after years and years in the workforce and raising his family, when he found that his daughter could get very little support. She got a job seeker number but she had not been employed long enough to get the kind of assistance she needed to find a job.

This family took the tough decision. Their daughter is studying. At the cost of an $18,000 debt, she has enrolled in further study. I think that this is only one story coming out of our communities and I think that this legislation is going to embed those difficulties for people in my electorate. That is because finding a job is very difficult in my community. The young apply for jobs. Indeed, most weeks I receive emails from local young people, often with a university degree, who are finding it difficult to get jobs. People with trade qualifications are finding it difficult to get jobs. I recently met with some gentlemen in their late 20s, two of whom had PhDs, who were struggling to find jobs.

Those leaving school often have experience. Many of the young people in my electorate have had part-time jobs as they have studied and as they have completed secondary school—often more than one part-time job. They find very quickly that those part-time jobs do not hold much weight in what is a very tough employment situation that we have locally. Sometimes, they come to my office wanting work experience, thinking of volunteering in the office or perhaps asking if I could write a reference to assist them and work together with them to get a job. Some complain about the quality of the job service providers, as the father of that young lady did. Some are simply desperate to secure employment.

You will forgive me in this chamber if I mention how offended I am for the young people in my community when I hear the rhetoric coming from the other side that insinuates and implies that young people think that they want to leave school and go on the dole or that they are waiting the ideal job. The member for Durack did that much in her contribution that preceded mine, suggesting that kids cannot be fussy in the country, implying that somehow in the metropolitan areas they are. I am deeply offended by that kind of rhetoric on behalf of the young people in my community and their hardworking families. I want to put that on the record. These are motivated, quality and hardworking young adults who I referred to, not the stereotyped no-hopers sitting around playing video games that those opposite seem to think our electorates are crammed with. Many have a relatively long part-time work history alongside study, as I have mentioned. They are not waiting for their ideal job, as suggested by our Prime Minister.

The Abbott government has stated that this legislation will set a clear expectation that young people need to maximise their efforts to obtain work, implying that that is not already the case, implying that it is the fault of young people that this country's employment figures are where they are and implying that somehow young people are flawed and not trying hard enough. I have spent time listening to them, listening to their stories of how many positions they have applied for and assisting them to create CVs. Sometimes they have multiple CVs, because those with higher education qualifications may have a work history of having been employed in entry-level manual labour, so they have one CV for seeking those positions and one CV for seeking entry-level professional positions. They are struggling to get interviews for either, because the jobs are not there.

These are people who live a 45-minute drive—which is sometimes an hour and a half in peak hour—from the CBD of Melbourne, which is our primary employment sector. These are people living in an affordable area. They are from families who have purchased homes in affordable areas and raised their families there, only to find that now finding employment for young people is very difficult. This rehashed image may have worked the 1970s—this view of the old world—recalling demonised, stereotyped pictures of young people sunning themselves in Byron Bay on beaches rather than working, but it is misleading and this government knows it. Being in receipt of government income support already has a range of mutual obligations. Current activity tests and other participation requirements are already some of the strictest in the OECD. The assumption that those young people who cannot find work are simply not motivated and lack the will to work is not true.

I have seen no substantive evidence or research that shows that a lack of motivation is a major contributor to unemployment. Most likely, as I said, it is a lack of jobs, particularly entry-level jobs. It is the lack of qualifications, skills and experience that contributes to unemployment. It is the unwillingness of employers to take on a young person. The fact that youth unemployment is always consistently higher than the average shows this to be true. This youth unemployment increase has been on the rise since the global financial crisis and has steadily increased under this government. Rather than take that on board and get the jobs plan in place, they seek to find savings by punishing young people and by leaving them with no income for four weeks. That might work in some of the homes of those opposite, but it would not work in my home and it does not work in the homes of the people who live in the electorate of Lalor. Many of those families are already under financial pressure and this will be yet another burden for them to take into their family budget.

Some young people worry that their proud achievement of the year 12 completion—sometimes they are the first their family to do so—is clouded by the secondary school that they attended or by their ethnicity. I reassure them that our schools are rightly proud of their educational outcomes and of the well-rounded young adults who graduate; but this is not played out in the job application process. Indeed, there is significant motivation for finding employment, because trying to live on Newstart or youth allowance is incredibly difficult in itself. Youth allowance of $123.40 a week, in my view, is not much of an incentive to sit at home.

That is $18 a day. It is $8 for a zone 1/2 myki ticket. That $8 to get to a job interview in Melbourne's CBD. It is $18 for you to put petrol in the car if you have a licence, pay the insurance on the car, make the payments on the car and pay the registration on the car. That is if they finish school, they are 18 and they have a car. Guess what? Most employers would like them to be 18 and have a car and a licence to get that precious job. If they get up the line, get the interview and get short-listed, the demands on them are very great. So I do not believe that young people are sitting around at home on their measly $18 a day thinking that they are living the life of Riley. This puts enormous pressure on families. To cut the payment off for four weeks and to leave young people with nothing for four weeks is a punishment that they do not deserve. As I have said, Lalor is home to hardworking families on modest incomes, families who do not have deep reserves, families who struggle to meet all their bills and payments on time. My community has a high rate of mortgage stress and rental evictions. This will see many more young people staying at home for longer and longer periods of time.

One of the first things I did when I was elected to this place was to bring the service providers together to discuss the housing and homelessness issues our community faces. A basic human right is secure living circumstances, and this legislation will put young people in independent living situations at risk, driving young people to the payday lenders to cover their bills, to make their contribution to the rent if they are sharing a house with other young people. You can see this as it is happening in my electorate. Young things have found their first job, put some savings together, found some friends, created a share house and paid the bond. They may have been renting now for six or eight months. If one of them loses their job, there will be no income for four weeks. If that young person moves home, the rent for the other people in that share house increases. We are talking about putting added stresses onto young people, onto their living arrangements, onto their independence, and adding to the eviction pressures in my local community.

With no income, where will these young folk find the money for transport to attend a job, to go to the job provider, to attend interviews, to dress appropriately, to keep connected to the internet, to have a reliable computer? These are very serious things this government intends to do. But the worst of these measures is the signal they send into the community that somehow our young people are not trying hard enough, that somehow our young people are doing it easy. That is not the case in my electorate. It is not the case, I suspect, across this country. I agree with the member for Durack in that I do not believe it is the case in the country either.

I fear this is just another example of this government seeking to divide our community. It is just another example of this government seeking to find winners and losers, to reward the winners and to punish the losers. I think about what is happening in the apprenticeship area, and it gives me no more comfort at all. I think about the 25,000 apprentices who have sought to take up the loan offer given by this government. I remember back to the rhetoric about how good that was going to be for young people. Only 24,000 apprentices have taken up the Trade Support Loans debt scheme, compared to 192,000 Australian apprentices in 2012-13 who got the Tools For Your Trade payments. This government is seeking to divide. Now it wants to punish our young people. (Time expired)

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say to the member for Grey that I appreciate his contribution. I am not sure that I accept all of it, and I certainly do not support this legislation. I think we need to remind ourselves of what this legislation will do: it will extend the application of an ordinary waiting period of seven days to recipients of parenting payment and youth allowance. The ordinary waiting period currently applies for Newstart allowance and sickness allowance recipients.

These changes, to occur shortly, raise the eligibility age for NSA and sickness allowance from 22 to 25 years from 1 July 2016. The age requirement for the youth allowance will also be adjusted up from the current ceiling of 21 years to 24 years. It is really difficult to understand how anyone in the government can be supporting this legislation, other than that they see it as a way to save money and belt young people. The legislation will introduce a four-week waiting period for new claimants of youth allowance and the special benefit payment who are aged under 25 years. That will operate from 1 July 2016. It will abolish the low-income supplement from 1 July 2017. It will pause indexation of the income-free areas for all working age allowances other than the student payments and for parenting payment single from 1 July 2015. It will pause indexation of the income-free areas and other means test thresholds for student payments from 1 January 2016.

I have been listening to the contributions being made to this debate and I have been struck by the apparent sympathy for young people coming from the other side. But with the very vindictive nature of this legislation that will apply to young people it is very difficult to understand. We know that unemployment for young people is getting worse and not getting better. For young people between the ages of 15 and 24, the unemployment rate currently stands at 13.7 per cent and at 19.3 per cent if they are between 15 and 19. A report from the Brotherhood of St Laurence's My Chance, Our Future youth employment campaignsays:

The chance of finding a job has been declining since the GFC. The probability of finding a job fell sharply for 15 to 19 year olds: by early 2015, less than 15 per cent of the unemployed in this group moved from unemployment into employment from one month to the next.

This is portraying the difficulty that young people who are currently unemployed are confronting in moving from unemployment to work on a month-by-month basis. This ought to be causing people here some concern. It certainly causes me a great deal of concern. I know it worries the parents across this country of young people under the age of 25 who are eligible or old enough to be in the workforce.

The Brotherhood of St Laurence's report The teenage dream unravels: trends in youth unemployment from March 2015 says:

It can’t be said enough, amid a steady rise in the overall unemployment rate, Australia’s youth continue to bear the brunt – and teenagers are faring worst of all.

If that is the case—and we know it to be the case because the data is self-evident—then we have to be very concerned about a piece of legislation that will actually hurt young people. It will not be an incentive to go back to work or find a job; it will be a massive disincentive.

For those of us who have the good fortune to be parents, we know what the challenges may be in looking after a family, raising young people and giving them an opportunity. There are parts of Australia where these opportunities are very, very difficult to find. Young people looking for work who may have left school or even a tertiary institution find it immensely difficult. If those young people with some tertiary education are lucky enough to find work, often it will not be in the field of their study. Yet they will take these jobs because they want to work. It is very clear that Australian young people want to work. I think it is quite obnoxious for there to be a view that somehow or other young Australians are afraid of work. That simply is not the case. I will just go to the Bills Digest, which says:

There is no substantive evidence to suggest that young Australians lack the will to work. A number of surveys of young people show that a majority want to work or to work more hours, but face a number of barriers to their doing so.

So it is entirely false to be living under the assumption that somehow or other there is a whole host of young Australians who do not want to work.

I travel a lot, I have been in this job a long time, I meet a lot of people and I have to say that I rarely find anyone who does not want to work. People want the income security that comes from a job. They want to be able to make purchases. They want to be able to look after themselves and potentially look after families, if they are fortunate enough to have one.

But this legislation will ensure impecuniosity for some young people. It will, I daresay, force some onto the streets. There will be more calls about young homeless people, because these young people cannot afford to rent or have access to property because their parents are not wealthy or because they do not get on with their parents, for whatever reason, and cannot live at home. What happens to these young people? What are we proposing they should do? Well, they will go without. This, in my view, not only is stupid but could force them to do things that we all would wish they would not do.

So I say to the government that I think these measures—the waiting period for income support, in particular—are of real concern. I, like many others, can see no justification for these measures at all. Despite the protestations of government members, who say it is all fair and it is all hunky-dory, 'Don't you worry about that,' it is not fair. It is not fair. It is patently unfair. We in this parliament say we want people to be able to look for work and we want to make sure that they are not welfare dependent. But I, like a lot of others, believe that these sorts of measures will lead to welfare dependency for many people—many, many people.

It would be all right for us middle-class Australians in this place, living on a very good income; we can afford to survive for a month with no income, potentially. But imagine if you have nothing. Many Australians would not be able survive for a month without income. Many working families would just not survive without an income, and members of many of those working families might well be under 25. We are now saying, 'That may be, but as far as we and the rest of the world are concerned we're going to legislate to make sure that you go without an income in these circumstances if you're under the age of 25.'

The government can talk about measures to create opportunities for young people, but what is clear, in terms of this government, is that you cannot provide an opportunity that makes good sense when you do not want to have good sense, because this piece of legislation does not make good sense. I refer to National Welfare Rights Network Policy Officer Gerard Thomas—and I am indebted again to the Parliamentary Library for this—who has insisted these measures 'would lead to greater levels of welfare dependency, not less'.

What do we expect young people to do if they are either unwilling or unable to seek family support in a period when they might be unemployed and not have income support? What do we really expect? These measures are really a disinvestment in the future of Australia. They do not encourage young people to take the challenge and make the effort to seek out opportunities for education, training and employment.

I am assuming that the government believes that, somehow or other, people in this category do not have costs that they must meet, that they can rely on others to provide for them—that they do not have to provide food; that someone else is paying their medical expenses; that, if they are fortunate enough to be in accommodation and if rent is payable, someone else will pay their rent and someone else will pay for their gas and electricity; and that someone else, presumably, will pay for their transport costs when they go looking for a job.

Let us be very clear. Pushing young Australians aged between 22 and 24 from Newstart onto the lower youth allowance is, effectively, a cut of $48 a week or almost $2,500 a year. Think about it. Just imagine the family budgets of working Australians—not us in this place—being cut by $2½ thousand a year. It is not appropriate, and we should not be supporting it. None of the major welfare organisations believe there is any support for these measures. ACOSS, the National Welfare Rights Network, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Mission Australia: none of them believe that these proposals are appropriate.

People need to understand what this measure means. I cannot for the life of me understand how government members cannot see that this is going to have a dramatic impact on their own communities. It is going to affect the lives of thousands of families and, particularly, thousands of young people and their families. It will concern their parents, their teachers, their friends and all the people they engage with. I think it is critically important that the government review this measure.

I know there are young people who are prepared to travel to look for work. A young person came into my office last year looking for work. She was a graduate of the University of Melbourne. She and her partner had both arrived in Alice Springs looking for work. I put her on for a stint in my office, and she proved to have some very, very good skills. But she remained there only for a short time because she picked up some full-time work elsewhere—and I encouraged her to take that job. Her partner also had full-time work. They have settled into work and, only recently, have taken out a home loan to buy a place in Alice Springs. These are young people who have the same attributes as many, many, many other young Australians: they want to work, they are prepared to travel for work, they are prepared to look for work and they are prepared to work. I do not think the message conveyed by this legislation gives young Australians any confidence that this government actually understands what their needs are or appreciates the circumstances in which they live.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Unemployment and other Measures) Bill of 2015. In a very practical sense, the measures proposed in this bill seek to introduce a revised, four-week waiting period for youth income support from 1 July 2016—1 July 2016, not 2015. This is a great outcome for those struggling with unemployment and, of course, for those suffering from its financial repercussions. It reintroduces key changes to indexation, to name a few. The best thing that anybody can do, that any government can ever do, for the young unemployed in this country is create jobs. The government understands that it is there to provide a safety net and a support network—not a lifestyle—and it is our determination to do that. I will come to more of those points in the bill as I progress.

I am very pleased to speak on this bill today because, as a government, we have a very, very clear road map of how we are going to address unemployment across our nation. I want to speak on this bill today with the reflection of my electorate of Paterson and how we as a government are seeking to address the challenge of under-employment and unemployment—unlike those opposite, who have no clear intention of addressing the issue whatsoever. All we hear from the opposition—and when they were in government—is rhetoric. No plans, no solutions and, in particular, no outcomes. Those opposite have only made illusory comments in their budget-in-reply speeches. They have only contributed to what is the issue of youth unemployment across our great nation. Unemployment in Paterson, as a general figure, is around 7.2 per cent. Youth unemployment is unacceptably high across our nation, with the current unemployment rate for young Australians aged 15 to 24 at around 13.4 per cent, as of May 2015. In the Hunter and mid-north coast regions in which my electorate of Paterson falls, the youth unemployment rate falls between 14 and 18.6 per cent; it is higher than the national average. It takes me back to the days when I first came into this House in 1996, when we had record unemployment; in particular, youth unemployment was getting up to around 30 per cent—such is the legacy that Labor tends to leave coalition governments to fix up. These are very, very sobering figures, but they are figures that we have accepted and are addressing in government.

We are addressing the issue of youth unemployment through a number of comprehensive packages over a number of portfolio areas. This is not one issue in isolation. This requires a whole-of-government approach. As a government, we are acutely aware of the need for employment and the benefit that it has for our economy. I am pleased that the 2015-16 budget has an incredibly strong focus on job seekers, especially young job seekers, to help them not only find employment but retain employment. One of the ways in which we have done this is through our Growing Jobs and Small Business package, which includes a wide range of measures to assist our young job seekers, like those in my electorate of Paterson, through programs, including the new $18 million National Work Experience program.

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

Hear, hear! A great program!

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the minister says in response: a great program. What it will do is provide job seekers with the opportunity to undertake work experience in businesses for up to 25 hours a week for four weeks to improve their chances of finding a job. Not only will it give them the experience; it will prove a thing called 'stickability'. These kids turn up, they do the work experience and they have the stickability. They have come each and every day because they are committed to getting a job. They also find out whether they actually like that work as a form of employment. There is also the new $1.2 billion wage subsidy pool so that more job seekers are eligible for wage subsidies sooner and more flexible wage subsidy arrangements are in place so that employers are able to access wage subsidies earlier to help with the up-front costs of hiring and training. There is a new $212 million Transition to Work service to help young job seekers most at risk of long-term unemployment improve their chances of finding and keeping a job. There is a $106 million package for the new pilot programs to test innovative approaches to helping young job seekers, such as those with mental illness, parents and young people from refugee or migrant backgrounds to move from welfare to work. That is the objective. It is to get people to move from welfare to work so they too can have a meaningful life and contribute to our society. With the changes to strengthening job seekers compliance arrangements and promoting a strong 'work first' approach amongst early school leavers, we want young people to move into the workforce, not onto the dole queue.

These programs will build on the Job Active. The government has recently announced a $6.8 billion employment services program, which is replacing Job Services Australia on 1 July 2015. It includes a national rollout of Work for the Dole. Mr Deputy Speaker, if you want to take our fellow taxpayers' money then what you should be able to do and be prepared to do is work for the dole, contribute something back to the community, which is supporting you through its taxes. My coalition colleagues and I are ensuring that the young and unemployed can become more engaged with the workforce, not disengaged and isolated. Our reforms send a very strong signal that we, the taxpayers, will support you when you need it, but we will not keep you. This bill, with its practical measures, is also about educating the unemployed that welfare is not a lifestyle choice, that it is not an employment option; it is a safety net. I think it important when educating the young and unemployed that welfare should not be seen as a long-term option over actively seeking and engaging in the workforce.

I welcome the support in the employment programs announced in the budget for our region's young people, the youth of my electorate of Paterson. We as a government understand that small business is the engine room of our economy. It is no secret, no surprise, that this is where the jobs are actually created. It is where the jobs are sustained and it is where the unemployed and those seeking work can move to. It needs to be the logical choice to move to an employer, not the unemployment queue.

Under the previous Labor government, I saw in my electorate of Paterson small businesses repeatedly crippled, hobbled at the knees. It was disgusting; it was disgraceful. I was approached by a number of small businesses who were practically drowning in unnecessary red tape. It is because of that and after meeting with these small business owners and relaying the feedback to my coalition colleagues that we have now mapped a very clear pathway for a better way for small businesses to deal with these issues in our nation and, importantly, across my electorate. This bill will deliver outcomes, and it is outcomes that we pursue.

The government's 2015 budget is a game changer for the hardworking men and women of Australian small business. Our Growing Jobs and Small Business package is the biggest economic recognition of the sector in Australia's history. Small business has been and continues to be an enduring focus and priority for this government. We are reducing the corporate tax rate from 30 per cent to 28.5 per cent for small businesses with annual turnover under $2 million . It is estimated that some 780,000 companies could benefit from this measure—this is 780,000 more companies that will have the opportunity to employ more young people. I see our Growing Jobs and Small Business package as a direct way in which we as a government can assist youth unemployment in our nation—this is a package of practical measures to help small business invest, hire and grow, which in turn enables them to employ more people, and in particular more youth—the youth of this nation that deserve every opportunity to be fully engaged in the work force.

The coalition's Growing Jobs and Small Business package outlines: the lowest small business company tax rate in almost 50 years; tax cuts of 1.5 per cent, down to 28.5 per cent, for incorporated small businesses with an annual turnover up to $2 million; a five per cent tax discount for unincorporated small businesses, up to $1,000 per annum; and small businesses can claim an immediate tax deduction for each and every asset purchase up to $20,000 from the night of the budget through to 30 June, 2017. Those on the opposition benches do not seem to understand that when businesses are spending they are actually creating jobs in someone else's business. When a business spends, there is a purchase made so someone has to supply that product or provide that service, so jobs are created. It will be a massive kick-start to our economy and hopefully will address some of our unemployment problems. Also, start-ups will be allowed to immediately deduct professional expenses, providing cash flow benefits, and we are expanding tax concessions for employee share schemes.

All of these things are designed to grow small business, so our economy grows, and as a result jobs are created. As I said at the beginning, this government understands that the way to address unemployment in this nation, and particularly youth unemployment, is to create a path where businesses themselves can invest, can grow, can create jobs and can be sustainable—and without quality employees they can go nowhere. You cannot grow a business and not have the employees to support that growth. Our packages overall, across all portfolios, are designed with one thing in mind, and that is to reduce unemployment in this great country. I want to see a return to the halcyon days under the Howard government when unemployment was low and employers were struggling to find employees. That is not the case now, when people are queued up. How often do we read about a bloke who has put in 100 or 200 applications, without even getting the courtesy of a reply? There are so many people, particularly young people, who lose faith absolutely because they continue to apply for jobs and at times do not even get the courtesy of a response. I have had this situation in my own household with one of my children. I have seen it first hand. I, as a parent, understand very well how critically important it is to create jobs in this nation so kids—not just mine but every young person—have the opportunity to get into the work force, not onto the dole queue. Labor's preferred option is welfare. That is reflected in all of the speeches that they make. They want to support welfare; it is all about welfare. A point of difference is that I say it is all about employment—creating the opportunity for employment so individuals have a sense of worth that they are contributing to this nation and can grow personally. That is what this bill is designed to enable. We will provide a helping hand, we will support people, but we will not create a lifestyle for anyone at the taxpayer's expense.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. At the outset, those of us on this side of the House are very keen to support young people finding employment; we do not demonise them. So often we hear from the government side a succession of speakers who demonise and attack young people. We on this side want to support young people—we want to help them find jobs and make sure they have good long-term jobs for the future.

The measures in this bill continue the Abbott government's cruel attack on young Australians. We have already seen this in so many other areas, whether they be health, education or pensioners, and in this bill we see it in relation to young people. There is quite a bit of unfairness in this bill, and one example is the introduction of a one-month waiting period for the Newstart allowance. This is another unfair measure; another bad measure by a bad government. The fact is this bill seeks to give young job seekers under 25 nothing to live on for a month—absolutely nothing. It is another abandonment of young Australians by this Liberal-National government, and it reflects the continued unfairness at the very core of this government. This move is particularly unfair in the context of the very high youth unemployment which we see in this country. I will certainly talk more about that later, specifically in relation to regional areas. Rather than young people being provided with support, we see them being constantly demonised by this government. Labor knows and understands that young people want to work. They want to be able to find work. They do not want to be on benefits. They want to be able to work and contribute. That is what they aspire to.

Labor will oppose this latest cut that will impact on young Australians, just as we opposed last year's attempt to leave young job seekers with nothing to live on for six months. Whether it is one month or six, Labor will not support any measure which pushes young people into poverty and hardship. The costs to the community of that lifetime disadvantage are devastating to the individuals, to their families and to their communities. This is especially significant in regional areas, where youth unemployment is so high it is at levels we have not seen for decades. If you look at my electorate of Richmond, youth unemployment is as high as 25.8 per cent amongst our 15-24-year-olds. That is a huge figure—25:8 per cent. Particularly in regional areas, youth unemployment is so high and is a grave concern.

We have said the bill introduces a range of very harsh measures, including the requirement that young people under 25 wait four weeks to receive income support. Of course, this bill continues the Liberal-National government's budget attack on young people with the introduction of this legislation that will leave them with nothing to live on for a month, and we certainly oppose this position. Despite record high youth unemployment, the government sought initially to punish young people by imposing a six-month waiting period for access to NewStart. It is still one month, and that is very cruel. Labor continues to oppose this measure, because we understand that punitive measures are not the way to boost youth employment—it is not the way to go. We also understand that, in this current climate of grossly high unemployment, young people need every bit of real assistance they can get to enter or re-enter the workforce. Denying access to funds for even one month will make it sometimes impossible for young people to live, to pay their rent, to eat or even to pay for petrol to get to job interviews. Of course we heard the Treasurer say last year that poor people do not drive cars; that shows how out of touch the government is. What this government is doing will make it much harder for young people to live day to day. These are measures that will push young people into poverty; that is the reality—make no mistake about it. Most major welfare organisations across the country have commented on the unfairness of these measures and highlighted these cruel measures. In fact, ACOSS, the Australian Council of Social Service, said:

The Government now proposes to reduce the six month wait for unemployment payments for young people to one month, yet neither policy has been justified, especially at a time when unemployment is rising.

Another cruel measure is the extension of Youth Allowance from 22- to 24-year-olds in lieu of NewStart and sickness allowance, and this punishes young people by requiring them to live for an additional two years on a lower rate of assistance. This measure changes the eligibility age for NewStart, pushing job seekers who are between the ages of 22 and 24 onto the lower Youth Allowance. This a cut of around $48 a week; that is $48 a week this government wants to take off young people or around $2,500 a year. That is a very significant amount of money for a young person. Labor will oppose this measure because it is unfair and wrong. Also unfair is the application of a one-week waiting period to all working-age payments. This is another shameful cut by the government that will leave people on income support with nothing for a week. We also oppose the pauses to indexation changes over time, as these changes will hurt vulnerable people even more.

All this comes at a time, as I have said, of record youth unemployment. We know youth unemployment is around double the national average—in fact, the highest in a decade. In some parts of Australia, particularly regional areas, like my electorate of Richmond, more one in four young people cannot find a job. That is a huge statistic—one in four young people cannot find a job. Labor is the only party taking unemployment seriously; we are the only party that has a plan to address the youth jobs crisis in this country. At no stage during the global financial crisis, the most significant global recession since the Great Depression, was the youth unemployment rate as high as it is now under the Abbott government. Youth unemployment is currently at levels not seen since the mid-1990s. For the last 12 months, the average trend unemployment rate for young people looking for full-time work has been 15.7 per cent for people between 15 and 24 years old, and, as I have said, in regional areas it is often much higher.

Labor understands that, without a successful transition from study to work, young people will experience life-long employment disadvantage. We also understand how important it is to provide effective youth programs and training. Yet, what have we seen from this government? We have seen really effective youth programs cut. In last year's budget we saw the Abbott government completely cut all three youth unemployment prevention programs: Youth Connections, Partnership Brokers and National Career Development. These cuts were made despite the programs delivering excellent results since they were established by Labor in 2010. These are services that have been available to any young Australian and have helped tens of thousands of people from all communities and social backgrounds. I want to highlight in my electorate the Byron Youth Service, which has provided so much valuable support through Youth Connections, and that service may face closure due to these harsh cuts. For a service like Byron Youth Service to be facing closure is devastating for the young people of that region. Youth Connections provided the majority of their funding. Youth Connections has a truly impressive success rate in finding alternative ways to help people finish year 12, with over 80 per cent of participants in work or study 18 months after completing the program. Youth Connections reaches many people who would otherwise be left to face a lifetime risk of higher unemployment and lower earnings. Seventy per cent of Youth Connections students are from rural and regional areas; 20 per cent are Indigenous; and 40 per cent are from the most socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Those programs are really important, and yet this government has cut them all and not replaced them with anything, leaving those young people with no options for engaging in effective programs.

I also want to mention that, when it comes to educational opportunities, one of the most ruthless attacks from this government is that on the higher education. The deregulation of university fees and the proposed 20 per cent cut in funding means that we will end up with $100,000 university degrees. I can tell you, and I hear this from rural and regional families all the time, that the fact that the Abbott government is going to bring in such harsh cuts means that their kids will not be able to access higher education. They cannot in any way afford such high university fees.

We have also seen the Abbott government cut funding from skills by slashing programs that provided apprenticeship opportunities and support. Apprenticeship related programs are vital to that important transition from training to work. The Abbott government's own record to date condemns young people with $1 billion in cuts to apprenticeship programs in the 2014-15 budget. It has also replaced apprentice support with apprentice debt; rebadged and cut funding to Australian Apprenticeship Centres; and abolished the Joint Group Training program. In fact, the government has put forward no new ideas for training young people for the jobs of the future. All we have seen when it comes to any skills and training initiatives is cuts, cuts, cuts. Of course, before the election the Prime Minister promised that the coalition would provide better support for Australian apprentices, but, in fact, the government has done exactly the opposite. It was another blatant lie from this government as it proceeds to make very deep cuts to the apprenticeship programs. It has now produced two budgets, and all we have seen are many more cuts and absolutely no support. The government has cut funding for vital and proven services that assist young people to transition swiftly and successfully into the workforce. We have seen so many cuts in those training areas and in youth support areas and the increase in university fees; it is making it very difficult for younger people to gain effective training.

In contrast to the government's cuts, Labor recently launched the first part of our plan to tackle youth unemployment—namely, Youth Jobs Connect. Youth Jobs Connect is a $21 million pilot program that will help young people move from unemployment to work. We have announced this policy because youth unemployment levels, as we have said, are at such record high levels across the country. Despite continuous calls—not just from the Labor side but from throughout the community—for the Abbott government to articulate a jobs plan, they have not done that at all. They have shown no interest in that. They are so out of touch and are obviously not concerned about the future for young people, when you look at the content of bills like this. It seems their only plan is to continuously put barriers in the way of young people seeking employment opportunities. There are constant barriers, not just this bill but also all the other barriers that I have already outlined.

Only Labor understands that a successful transition from study to work will help prevent young people from experiencing life-long employment difficulties. We certainly understand that. Youth Jobs Connect is an intensive six-month program to help disadvantaged young people under 24 get into work. There will be a focus on developing strong links with local employers to provide young people with work experience and employment opportunities within their businesses. Also, mentoring and training in core employability skills, along with, when required, literacy and numeracy skills, will help about 3,000 young people to find and keep a job. That is what Labor is doing. We are committed to addressing many of the concerns that are in existence when it comes to our young people being provided with effective training, mentoring and assistance to find employment.

On the other hand, this Liberal-Nationals government continually denies younger people access to any means and assistance that might be help them get a job. This bill fundamentally seeks to marginalise the youth of this country through a very misguided and unfair approach through the use of punishment. They are being quite cruel. We know that does not work. We know such punitive measures do not work. We know the most effective tool is to provide incentives, support and training and to provide younger people with all those skills they will need to enter the workforce. We know that is important. We know that jobseekers need support to find a job—not savage attacks that make it harder for them to be able to find work.

As we have said, Labor will oppose this government's latest cruel and savage cuts to younger people. Whether it is for six months or one month, Labor will not support a measure which punishes young people into poverty and hardship. I have had that feedback in my local area, where people were saying, initially: 'Yes, the six months is cruel.' Well, the one month is equally cruel. I do not think that Australians want to have a country that leaves young people with nothing to live on. I do not think they want to be in a country where young people are pushed into poverty. This legislation represents an abandonment of young people by this government. That is effectively what it does. They do not seem to care. They seem so out of touch with the fact that younger people will be pushed into poverty by their actions. It reflects the gross unfairness at the very core of this government's budget.

At the end of the day, this government have no plan for jobs and they have no plan to deal with the youth unemployment crisis. It is particularly pertinent in regional areas. I implore those government members, particularly some from regional areas, to talk to people in their communities and understand how important it is for the government to have an effective plan to provide training and support for younger people and how important it is to make sure that youth programs are in place. Instead, we are seeing the government cutting all those youth programs. We need to see programs in place to make sure that assistance is there for younger people.

On this side, Labor will continue to oppose any of those cruel measures that will push younger people into poverty and make it more difficult for them. We will continue to stand up for young people by opposing all of the unfair measures of this government. We did it with the six-month wait for Newstart, and we will continue to do it with the one-month wait as well. It will not just be on this bill; it will be across all those other measures—whether they are the youth programs that provide support, whether they are the training and skills programs to make sure younger people can get all the skills they require to enter the workforce or whether they are about defending the right of our younger people to access education, particularly higher education. This comes on top of some claims we hear today about the government's schools tax that we might be seeing. This government seems to be going out of their way to impose punitive measures upon younger people—and we will continue to oppose them.

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before speaking about the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015, I want to address some of the statements made by the member for Richmond with a quick history lesson. In December 2008, youth unemployment was 13.6 per cent. In December 2012 it was 17.3 per cent. As she leaves, the member for Richmond will think: 'Well, that was a failed Labor jobs plan for the youth of our society, wasn't it?' Another failed Labor jobs plan: we always hear about Labor and their jobs plan, and look what happened? Youth unemployment went up by around four per cent.

The member for Rankin sitting in this chamber here today will recall the history lesson I gave him recently. When he was adviser to the Treasurer, unemployment was at a higher level, according to their forecast, than it is now. We have created 280,000 jobs since coming into government. We have helped the private sector, helped small businesses, helped the economy and helped the youth of our society. What did Labor do? There was the mining tax. There was the carbon tax. Did they help the youth get entry-level roles? No, they did not—definitely not. However, let us move on to some positive announcements and forget about Labor's rhetoric and unfulfilled promises.

In the 2015-16 budget, the government announced a jobs and small business package which increases support services to those impacted by changes in this bill.    We have invested close to $20 million for additional work experience places, providing on-the-job experience and connection to an employer. I know from my own personal experience that these are great initiatives. You get experience from an employer in a practical role, which might lead on to paid work. It gives the employer and the potential employee a chance to grow together and learn about each other's skills and opportunities.

We are providing close to $20 million in new support for youth with mental health conditions and $22.1 million in support for vulnerable young migrants and refugees. And we are continuing to support parents to prepare for employment, with $18.9 million. These trials focus on the most disadvantaged and will help them to prepare for work, find a job and stay in a job. But this debate today should focus on the income support waiting period only, as all other elements of this bill have been debated previously.

From 1 July 2016 young people under 25 who are the most ready and who apply for youth allowance or other special benefit will serve a four-week waiting period before becoming eligible for payment. During this four weeks, importantly, they will receive continual assistance, like meeting with a Job Active provider, agreeing to a plan, developing an up-to-date resume, creating a profile on the JobSearch website and providing evidence of applications. Further, we have made $8.1 million available in emergency relief to provide assistance to job seekers affected by the measure who are experiencing hardship.

Importantly, students will not be subject to the four-week waiting period. Further, in recognition of the importance of education and training in preventing future unemployment young people who return to school or take up full-time vocational education or university study will be able to seek more suitable payments, such as youth allowance for students, and would therefore not be subject to the four-week waiting period. And job seekers who have been assessed as having significant barriers to finding a job will not be required to serve the four-week waiting period. These are all important elements of this bill.

In South Australia in May 2015, the unemployment rate for 15-19 year olds was 22.7 per cent—far too high, and often something that has been far too high during 13 years of a state Labor government. I must give credit, though, to an organisation in South Australia that works with young people in employment and also other areas—SYC. They are based in Adelaide but they do great work nationally. A couple of their divisions are focused on providing meaningful assistance to young people in finding work. They also recognise the changing landscape for young people seeking their first real job. As employers opt increasingly for employees who have at least two years' work experience it is becoming increasingly difficult for young people actually to get those first two years' experience—particularly in their chosen career field.

This is something that SYC—and, I am sure, many others around Australia—are trying to help out with, similar to how our work experience initiative with the private sector and other organisations is so valuable. So I want to congratulate the SYC team—Paul Edginton, the chief executive, and Michael Clarke, who is another member of their executive—for the great work they are doing in my state and around Australia.

In terms of opportunities for young people today, there are a couple of sectors that really stand out. I have seen some really positive statistics in recent times, such as for retail trade. Woolworths has set up a new store at the Brickworks area in my electorate, employing many young people—12,000 South Australians, and 5,400 are under the age of 25. That is a significant percentage of employees. They also have 272 who are under 25 of 506 at the Masters store at the airport. That opened only recently and is doing great things.

In the accommodation and food services sector, which service the tourism sector, young people are 18.8 per cent of those employed in that sector. And health care and social assistance employ 7.7 per cent. And some of these sectors are growing—aged care, health care and tourism are all on the way up, and we will see more young people taking advantage of the growth in those sectors.

I want to make particular mention of a successful businessman who employs so many young people and who does some great training of young people in my electorate: Roger Drake, AM. He was a state finalist for Senior Australian of the Year 2015 and owns and runs Drake Supermarkets.

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's a great man!

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is a great man—you know him, too, don't you, member for Reid?

He places high importance on staff training. Drakes is a registered training organisation, and offers opportunities for all employees to undertake nationally recognised training. A few years ago, Drakes training was recognised for their passion and dedication by winning 'Employer of the Year' at the Australian Training Awards. As we know, training is extremely important in helping young people to get a job.

In closing: as you have heard, Mr Deputy Speaker, we are taking measures to ensure that young job seekers accept any suitable job, not just a job they would like to have. I know that they need to look at options, including travelling—and we have provided incentives for them to travel to rural areas where there are job opportunities, whether those be in hospitality or agribusiness, which are some of the growing sectors in our economy. Unemployment benefits are for those who are looking for work and who are struggling to find any work. We think this is fair and targeted.

In jobless families, the government is making sure that the welfare cycle stops, and that we are assisting those who are less privileged and finding it tough to work through those challenging times and to get meaningful employment. This is an important initiative; we are going to execute those programs that will deliver results, and by reducing taxes and helping businesses we are going to provide a better economy and more opportunities for young people. I commend this bill to the House.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the debate on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015.

This is a bill which speaks to this government's contempt for young Australians and for Australia's social compact. It represents a triumph of ideology over evidence. It was very interesting to hear the closing remarks of the previous speaker, the member for Hindmarsh, when he spoke about fairness and assistance for young job seekers. These are two things that are very little in evidence across this government's attitude to youth employment generally and that re nowhere to be found in the provisions of this mean-spirited bill.

The purpose of this legislation is, of course, to amend the Social Security Act 1991 and a number of pieces of related legislation. It will make some very significant changes, most of which—with, perhaps, one exception—are extremely objectionable and which will dramatically affect and hold back the course of too many young lives.

In outline, this legislation will extend the application of the ordinary waiting period of seven days to recipients of payments like the parenting payment and youth allowance. The ordinary waiting period currently applies to Newstart and sickness allowance recipients. It will also raise the eligibility age for Newstart and sickness allowance from 22 to 25 years of age from 1 July next year. The age requirement for youth allowance will also be adjusted upwards from the current ceiling of 21 to 24 years.

Cruelly, the four-week waiting period for new claimants of youth allowance and the special benefit will be introduced. The low-income supplement will be abolished and indexation is to be paused for the income-free areas for all working-age allowances from 1 July, and similarly with the student payments from 1 January 2016.

If a lot of this sounds familiar it is, of course, because it is. This bill is not the first time the Abbott government has tried to attack young people and their futures with these kinds of measures. Labor strongly opposed the previous incarnation of these cuts in this parliament and in the community, and it will do so again. Labor remembers, just as young people in my electorate and in the electorate of my friend the member for Rankin remember, the previous iteration of this legislation, where it was proposed that young people receive no income support whatsoever for a period up to six months. Let me be clear again: Labor will never support leaving young job seekers under 25 with nothing to live on for six months—or indeed for one month. This is a cut of at least $48 a week, or almost $2,500 a year.

Last week I spoke in this place about the youth unemployment crisis that affects the northern suburbs of Melbourne, including those in the electorate of Scullin. The youth unemployment rate in April hit 20 per cent. Whilst there is always some volatility in month-by-month figures, this rate has consistently been at least in the mid-teens. It is extremely worrying, to say the least. The rate is usually only as high as this over the summer holidays, when more young people are available and looking for work. That it is so high in the middle of the year should be setting off alarm bells for this government, as it is for me and my colleagues. Instead, we see an attitude of cruelty, of vindictiveness, of treating young lives as somehow disposable. How are young people supposed to find work when there simply aren't a sufficient number of entry-level jobs available?

Unemployment more generally has been above six per cent for over a year. It is tough out there—make no mistake. There is no plan for jobs from this government and no plan to equip young people to work the jobs of the future. Cutting people's already meagre payments is a simplistic and superficial approach to a complex problem. Again, it is the triumph of ideology over evidence and reason. Labor understands that job seekers need support to find a job and not be attacked or stigmatised. The young people who I speak to in the Scullin electorate are very keen to find and remain in employment, as are their parents and their grandparents, whose concern for young people, both those in their family and more generally, is a key feature of every street corner meeting that I attend.

The Australia Institute recently conducted a very valuable study, Hard to get a break?, whichfound:

Younger workers aged 17-24 years were most likely to identify the lack of jobs and their own lack of relevant skills as the main barrier to them finding a job than the other age groups. In the younger group, 36 per cent considered the lack of jobs the key problem compared to the average of 20 per cent across the other age groups. Similarly, 31 per cent of this group felt the appropriateness of their skills was the most important issue compared with the average of 13 per cent.

A University of Melbourne study found:

… poor macroeconomic conditions tend to drive young people out of full-time work and into inactivity or part-time work … males who did not complete secondary school suffer the largest increase in unemployment risks as the unemployment rate increases.

So what the evidence tells us we should be doing is skilling young people up—particularly vulnerable young people, particularly vulnerable young men. Instead, this government continues to try to knock them down, to deny them every chance to reach their full potential in life.

Unfortunately it appears that we have a government in Australia that is obsessed with making ordinary people's lives harder, not better. Last year's and this year's budgets have made the macroeconomic conditions in our economy so much worse. Consumer confidence and business confidence are down. People remain reluctant to spend, with a government that has no regard for levels of employment. This in turn means that businesses are less willing to hire new staff. It is a vicious circle, but it is one that this government could ameliorate if it just took a step back from these attacks on young people.

As the Parliamentary Library's Bills Digest notes, despite the fact that the waiting period has been significantly reduced, from six months to one month, and is now only to be applied once to claimants rather than on an on-going basis, it has been argued that four weeks without access to income support would still place many young people in severe financial hardship. The Bills Digest states:

If young people subject to the proposed new waiting period are unable or unwilling to call upon family support or the assistance of charities, then they could lack sufficient means to find a job. Further, if they have no savings or other means of support, these young people would be more likely to be preoccupied with the immediate needs of paying for food and rent than with finding paid employment.

This is something that government members would do well to relate to. The extraordinary cruelty of the original proposals this government put forward is one thing: six months with no income support whatsoever, and not one period of six months to be cut off from any support from the state or society; this is something that could have been repeated on young people. The consequences are not simply about foisting the support of individuals onto their families, where they have families able to support them, or onto charities under other circumstances; the impact goes deeper than that. The Bills Digest has identified something that we understand, something that we on this side of the House know: this also a huge barrier to enabling people to equip themselves to find work in circumstances where it is very tough to find work, with youth unemployment in the areas that I represent at around 20 per cent. This is something that this government does not or will not understand.

The same principle applies so clearly to the imposition of the activity test in terms of child care, where we are seeing exactly the cohort of people—in that case our most vulnerable young children, in this case young people who may well be at risk of falling between the cracks—who need investment, who need support to get a start on the ladder of life, having that denied to them. This is unnecessary cruelty which carries grave consequences for all of those individuals and for the shape of our society at large. This goes fundamentally to the sort of society that we see ourselves as being. It comes down to the social compact that ought to bind Australians. In Labor's vision we do not see these young lives as things that are simply disposable. We see a critical role of government as having a plan for jobs but also a plan to enable people to equip themselves to find those jobs, to engage in secure work, to achieve their potential and to enhance all of our potential as a society.

In this regard I do welcome one belated acknowledgement on the part of this government—that is, successful Labor policies like Youth Connections and Partnership Brokers tackled exactly this problem of helping young people who may be disengaged from education and the job market transition into employment in a sustainable way. We on this side remember that six months after leaving Youth Connections, 94 per cent of the young people who had been through the program were still engaged in education and employment, and after two years more than 80 per cent were still in work or education. Those remarkable figures meant nothing, sadly, to those opposite when they cut this program in last year's budget. We acknowledge that there is now a rebadged version of this program, which is welcome, but too little too late—especially when this government is cutting schools and universities and imposing draconian cuts on young job seekers, such as those set out substantively in this bill.

I note that Labor will be supporting one measure that is yet to be considered by this place—namely, the abolition of the low-income supplement. Of course the onus now should be on the government to split this element from the rest of the bill so it can be voted on. It is typically sneaky of the government to try holding this part hostage so it can complain—again unreasonably—that Labor is standing in the way of these savings. Labor is prepared to act in good faith; I call on the government to do likewise.

What I take issue with fundamentally is those opposite attacking vulnerable, young Australians as a way to make budget savings when there are other, far bigger, potential sources of budget repair. Last week the Minister for Social Services repeatedly described the pension as a 'welfare payment'. I think that would come as news to a lot of pensioners. I know that it did to those in my electorate—who raised the issue with me—and to many other Australians.

We have a social compact in Australia that the Abbott government is seeking to tear up. This compact has an international dimension, recognised in the various human rights covenants that Australia is party to. I note that in four out of five reports of the parliamentary joint committee on human rights, the committee has raised significant concerns regarding the right to social security as recognised in article 9 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Under article 9, the removal of a pre-existing social security right is subject to stringent scrutiny. The committee examined the measures, as introduced in the bill that preceded this one, and found that the six-month exclusion period measure, as previously proposed, was 'incompatible with the right to social security and the right to an adequate standard of living'. It is very hard to argue with that.

The committee also found that the exclusion period change and the proposed changes to the qualifying age for Newstart allowance and sickness allowance were 'incompatible with the rights to equality and non-discrimination on the basis of age'. Despite these legitimate and powerful concerns, the best the government could do was assert in its statement of compatibility that, while the exclusion period and age change measures would limit these same rights, the limitations were considered reasonable 'proportionate to the policy objective' and for 'legitimate reasons'. Unsurprisingly, this bald and callous assertion is not expanded on much beyond stating:

The amendments in this Schedule do not affect eligibility for social security pensions or benefits, rather they affect the rules governing when those eligible for certain payments can start receiving their entitlements. The amendments focus on promoting self-support by requiring people to meet their own living costs for a short period where they are able. New claimants who need immediate financial assistance will still be able to access exemptions and waivers provided they meet the relevant eligibility criteria.

What sophistry! If only life was so easy and straightforward. Maybe it is for members opposite, but it is not for the one in five young people who are unemployed in Melbourne's north today.

But this is the problem with this bill and the government's approach in a nutshell: it is ideology over evidence and it relies on people magically finding work where none, or none suitable, is available. We urgently need a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to this complex problem; one that works with people, not against them. I think all of us in this place want to see unemployment reduced. We want to see more people working; working in high-quality secure jobs; jobs that set them up for secure and high-quality lives.

Labor's position is starkly different from that of this callous government. You do not reduce unemployment by having people go without enough money to buy food or keep a roof over their heads. We recognise—apart from the basic dignity that is at risk here—that this is not the best preparation for anyone to find a job. Driving people into poverty or destitution solves nothing. It just makes a bad situation far worse. In government, Labor had policies that made a positive difference; policies that generated jobs growth and got people into work. Unemployment was actually lower under Labor than it has been at any stage under this government.

Reducing unemployment should not be seen as budget savings. It should not be seen as a burden. It is an investment in our young people. It is an investment in our capacity and our collective wellbeing. Unfortunately, it is the case that we have a government that is not concerned about youth unemployment or about the future of this country.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is good to have this opportunity tonight to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015.

To my mind, four things are required to address unemployment, particularly youth unemployment. Firstly, there needs to be skills and training, to prepare people for the opportunities of the future. There needs to be opportunities, because training without somewhere to go is not that useful. And there needs to be services and support, often provided by government or agencies of government. And probably above all, there needs to be a good attitude, a positive attitude, to the opportunities out there.

When I look around my electorate and the communities and the people of my electorate, I see some people who really know how to work hard, and they do great jobs. Some people are prepared to do anything. Often low-skilled people, people who have come from refugee or migrant backgrounds, are prepared to do some of the not very nice jobs in the electorate—including hard manual labour type jobs that are out there. So, above all, attitude is a very important element of all this.

I remember once when I was at a local high school—this was not long after I got elected; it might have been in 2008 or 2009. I was having a discussion with a year 10 class—I will not name the school—and one of the students said to me, 'If I don't want to work, I shouldn't have to'. Fortunately that is a very rare failure of attitude. Or maybe it is okay that someone should say, 'If I do not want to work should not have to.' But I think there is a responsibility in this nation that if someone decides they do not want to work, they do not want to make that sort of effort, they do not want to make a contribution then they should also never take the support of the taxpayer.

Fortunately that was the only time I have ever heard that said so I think that is a great endorsement on the people of my electorate and probably across the whole country. That self-centred viewpoint with such a lack of responsibility, I have only ever heard it once. Most of the time people have a very good attitude towards work. Every day when I walk into the shopping centre my office is at I see people hard at work whether it is in the fruit shop, the bakery, Woolworths or elsewhere. In Malaga or in Wangara, the light industrial areas, again, many people are at work and that is great.

I talked a bit about the four elements required to do something about unemployment. I would like to take up the opportunity side of things because obviously government does not create jobs—unless we are talking about increasing the size of the public service. Government is about facilitating private enterprise in the creation of jobs. So when the other side, the Labor Party, talked about how apparently we have no plan then obviously they were not there on budget night because the small business package was exactly about creating opportunities for Australians. It was exactly about the incentivising of the private sector to create jobs.

I think it was the member for Hume who asked a question where he highlighted a local business. Thanks to the small business initiatives of this coalition government, five jobs were created in one small business in the electorate of Hume—I think it was Hume. That is a great endorsement of a policy, which is a plan and which is helping private enterprise to create employment. I think that is where the opportunities lie.

On the issue of skills and training, I would also like to reflect very favourably on some of the high schools in the electorate of Cowan. I would like to start with Ballajura Community College, which has a very good hospitality program. I remember on many occasions where the school had invited me and other people to functions, going into the kitchen afterwards and being able to see the portfolios of the hospitality students—basically young chefs in the making—and a photo book of some of the great recipes and presentations they have done. It was very encouraging. Those are real skills for the future.

Woodvale Secondary College has certificate courses in animal studies, business, construction, engineering, hospitality, music, outdoor recreation, sport and recreation, and visual and contemporary craft. These are all part of the vocational education and training courses that exist at Woodvale Secondary College. Again, this is an example of where one of those elements of getting gainful employment in the future is achieved because the state education system is providing those course opportunities, those skills and training opportunities that young people want. We know that entry to university is not everything and it is not a measure of a person's success. Great employment—and very highly-paid employment as well—can be achieved through vocational education.

Next I would like to look at Girrawheen Senior High School, which, in conjunction with Polytechnic West, offers a certificate II in construction and a pre-apprenticeship in bricklaying and block laying. Girrawheen is not so much linked to university entry but very much linked to vocational education and training. I certainly endorse the work they are doing at Girrawheen Senior High School.

I would like to speak briefly about what Wanneroo Secondary College as well. Wanneroo Secondary College has effectively two campuses. It has got the main campus, which does the traditional subjects but it also offers certificates in sports and recreation, information and communication technology, business, visual arts, music, textiles and first aid. But over at the Joondalup campus there are traineeships and apprenticeships. Students can get certificates in construction, make-up and nails, child care, business, metals and engineering, electrical trades, automotive, hospitality and beauty.

I look at Wanneroo Secondary College and I see a school that is doing great work identifying what the students are interested in but also their needs as well. When I look at certificates in hospitality or in beauty or in makeup and nails, in every shopping centre these are the sorts of skills that employers require. I look at what is being done at these high schools and they are always interested in the vocational education and training opportunities for young people. I see that they are doing great focused work which does equip students for the opportunities of the future.

Again I look at the four elements that I mentioned before. There are the skills and training, which I have mentioned with regard to the high schools, the secondary schools, in the electorate of Cowan. I look at the opportunities, strengthened by the government's small business package and our plan for employment. I have talked briefly about the attitude. I mentioned just one example, and I am sure it is a very, very rare example, of someone with a bad attitude—maybe that was just bravado from a year 10 student. But, when I look at the numbers of students that are doing very well in the vocational education and training courses in Cowan, I think that that is a demonstration as well of a good attitude.

Those are three of the four elements. But what I would just like to talk about to finish, of course, is what the government also provides—that is, the services and support. This piece of legislation contains a number of measures addressing social services, from ordinary waiting periods through to age requirements for various Commonwealth payments, low-income support supplements, indexation and income support waiting periods. The House debated a number of these measures earlier, so it is my intention just to address the income support waiting times outlined in this legislation.

I believe the measures in the legislation are fair and targeted and will benefit young job seekers in Cowan. Certainly from 1 July 2016 young people under 25 who are the most job ready who apply for youth allowance or special benefit will serve a four-week waiting period before becoming eligible for payment. By 'job ready' I mean someone who lives in an area with good employment opportunities, has reasonable language, literacy and numeracy skills and has recent work experience. I can see that all of these are exactly the measures of the four elements of employment, dovetailing really well into this 'job ready' definition.

In this measure, yes, we do talk about savings because that is important, given the budgetary mess that we were left and the need to balance the books and to try to get this country sustainable. But, during the first four weeks, young job seekers will be meeting with a jobactive provider and agreeing to a job plan, developing an up-to-date resume, creating a job seeker profile on the JobSearch website and providing evidence of satisfactory job searches with up to 20 job applications. I think that certainly this is important. This goes to the obligations that I have mentioned before. It goes to the attitude as well. It is, again, the four elements of obtaining jobs that I mentioned before. These are the services and support provided by the providers that have been organised by the government.

Students will not be subject to the four-week waiting period. Furthermore, in recognition of the importance of education and training in preventing future unemployment, young people who return to school or take up full-time vocational education or university study will be able to seek more suitable payments such as youth allowance (student) and would therefore not be subject to the four-week waiting period.

Job seekers who have been assessed as having significant barriers to finding a job will not be required to serve the four-week waiting period. This will include stream B and stream C jobactive clients.

The bill also includes a number of important exemptions to the four-week waiting period: Firstly, if someone has served a four-week waiting period in the last six months, they will not have to serve another if that job ends through no fault of their own. They have done exactly what we have asked, and they will go onto the youth allowance payment. Certainly it is the case that there are protections, but there are also obligations involved with this bill.

As I said, the government are doing excellent work through the services and the support and also helping small business with the opportunities through our small business package. The state education system particularly is doing great work with skills and training. I believe that certainly in the electorate of Cowan, and across this whole country, young people have a great attitude. With these four elements, there will be the best opportunities available.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015, which has a particular draconian impact on unemployed young people. It is not, as the member for Cowan said, about making the young unemployed job ready. It is actually about punishing the young unemployed for being unemployed—in effect, blaming the victim. The measures in this bill continue the undeclared class and intergenerational warfare against young people and those on lower incomes that was at the core of last year's budget, and it is still central to this year's budget. It was central as well to the Commission of Audit report, which in effect recommended the original proposal, which was to knock people off unemployment benefits for a much longer period of time in the coalition's first budget.

In this budget there has been an attempt to cover over the stench of unfairness that characterised the 2014 budget. That is why this budget has not repeated the Ayn Rand rhetoric of 'lifters' and 'leaners' that so much characterised last year's budget. But it is there in intent. It is there in intent when it comes to the suspension for four weeks and when it comes to moving unemployed people onto the lower youth allowance.

The coalition have attempted to camouflage the stench of unfairness in this is year's budget by a lot of rhetoric, pomp and ceremony and stupidity about the instant asset write-off, which has come back as a boost to small business—that is, reconstructing a measure which the government abolished in the Commission of Audit and the midyear update after they were elected, and bringing it back and clothing it as somehow this fantastic employment measure. No doubt it will boost employment somewhat but it is not going to boost employment to the extent being claimed by others.

So far in the budget this year the Treasurer has not repeated the rhetoric of lifters and leaners but at the core of this budget is the coalition's absolute commitment to trickle-down economics, a doctrine that guides everything they do when it comes to the economy. In short, unfairness lies at the heart of their agenda and all of the pumped up rhetoric about Labor's repackaged instant asset write-off does not disguise the continuing unfairness in this year's budget.

What other measures are unfair? There are the sorts of measures described by the member for Cowan as being about job readiness. First, the Abbott government will attack young Australians by seeking to introduce a one-month waiting period for Newstart. Let us consider what that means. At the moment, youth unemployment is 13.5 per cent. It is a level not seen since 2001. That means there are about 280,000 young Australians unemployed at the moment. Think about that. That is about the population of Wollongong. So the government's legislation will leave some young job seekers with nothing to live on for a month. And just to rub salt into that wound, it also seeks to move some job seekers from Newstart onto youth allowance, which is effectively a cut of at least $48 a week. That is extraordinary. That is not about job readiness; that is about punishment. So they are stopping people from getting Newstart for a month, moving those onto youth allowance with a big hit to their weekly income. That is what this bill is all about.

The assumption over on that side of the House is, 'They'll be able to be supported by their families. Nothing's wrong. All should be okay. It's not too tough out there trying to live on $100 or $150 or on what they have left over after they meet the necessities of life.' The truth is that many families are not going to be able to support these people if, indeed, they are living with their families. And if they are living with their families, it does impose a very significant burden on households. It increases the pressure. At the heart of the measures in last year's budget and at the heart of the measures in this year's budget is the assumption that, if you cannot get a job, it is your fault. If you cannot walk into a job straight away then you are really not trying. They have this view even at a time when unemployment is at levels not seen in the last two decades.

So the Liberal Party are abandoning young Australians and casting them into a winner-takes-all bear pit where only the fittest survive. I can think of nothing more appropriate than the imagery of Ayn Rand and all of her writings, which I know members opposite are very familiar with. I know they are big fans, which is why it surfaces so frequently in their policy making. Policies like this one show that the government have not learnt a thing from last year's budget. They think that by reducing the Newstart withholding period from six months to one month is better. They simply do not get it.

The Labor Party will never support a measure which pushes more young people into poverty and at its core is fundamentally unfair and the Labor Party will never support a measure which will reduce social mobility and entrench unfairness like the coalition's $100,000 degrees policy. They simply do not get fairness because they have a policy agenda which favours those who are better off. The government simply do not do fairness very well. They simply do not understand the concept. They shy away from reforms that affect those who are better off but get stuck into those who have very little. It is a stingy measure to withhold money and it simply reflects their priorities.

We can see all this when we look at the analysis of what has happened with this budget—the sort of analysis the government refuses to do and which once upon a time was standard fare in a budget but is now abolished from the budget papers because the analysis tells the inconvenient truth of the impact of these measures. ACOSS and NATSEM have shown just how harsh their first budget was on low- and middle-income families and again as is their second budget. ACOSS estimates that the 2015 budget will cut $15 billion over four years from basic services which support vulnerable groups. NATSEM modelling shows that nine out of 10 of the lowest income families lose out under the Abbott government's budget while nine out of 10 of the wealthiest families will benefit. And above all, NATSEM modelling shows that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey have their sights firmly set on low- and middle-income families. Under this budget a family with a single income of $65,000 and two children will be $6,165 a year worse off by 2018-19, over $115 a week. A family with a dual income of $120,000 and two children will be $3,272 a year worse off by 2018-19, over $60 a week.

The Prime Minister has been quick to criticise this modelling because he says it does not take into account second-round effects. The budget never has taken into account second-round effects. Even if you leave that to one side, the fact that the budget is not crafted on second-round effects, thousands of people are going to be worse off. He is taking money out of the pockets of households and undermining confidence.

The Treasurer and the Prime Minister used to say that surpluses were in their DNA. They do not say that anymore and for obvious reasons. When a budget which is designed to be less unfair than last year's manages to produce these kinds of terrible effects, we know there is one thing that is truly in the DNA of the modern Liberal Party— an inability to practice fairness in anything they do. When the Abbott government proposed the six-month wait on Newstart last year, it was the single most vicious, unjustified and utterly punitive measure I have ever seen a government take anywhere in my time in public policy. And what was the rationale for the policy at the time? According to the former Minister for Social Services, New Zealand had a one-month waiting period which drove young people into the workforce

There is just one problem—New Zealand did not have a one-month mandatory waiting period and it never did. The former minister simply made it up. There is not a shred of policy research or advice to be found anywhere on the planet—not in New Zealand, not in Australia and not even with the wing nuts at the IPA—that gave any rationale for that policy. Nonetheless, they pushed ahead with a policy that denied upfront support to the most vulnerable labour market group at the very time they needed support to find work quickly—because that is just what Liberals do.

This really shows that the coalition do not understand jobs, they do not understand unemployment and they do not understand the macro economy. If they did, they would not have spent five years undermining confidence with their false debt and deficit emergency campaign, which they waged not only in opposition but also in government, ironically against themselves. A lot of that rhetoric has been ditched in this year's budget, along with the lifters and leaners rhetoric.

The fear campaign they ran about the budget and the economy smashed confidence to the point where, before this current budget, consumer confidence was down 13 per cent and business confidence was down a staggering 23 per cent. Only when confidence was reeling did the coalition seem to realise that, if you constantly talk the economy down and talk up a fictitious budget crisis, businesses are not going to hire extra workers, expand their business or invest in new equipment. Then hey presto, having decided that they should not be doing this and they should not have abolished the instant asset write-off, it makes reappearance as a new Liberal stimulus, with very little mention of where it actually came from. With confidence so low over the past year that is what has actually happened. They have been forced to change their rhetoric and to change some of their policies, but nowhere near enough.

Their forecasts have unemployment with a six in front of it across the forward estimates, and that is for the first time in many years. Right now there are 750,000 unemployed Australians. We are simply a small economic shock away from having one million unemployed in Australia. In what are, by and large, benign global economic conditions, this result is absolutely shameful—and the coalition do not have a plan to fix it. The budget papers show that they are not expecting unemployment to fall below six per cent until 2018-19. So the coalition has the mantra: 'Let's be brutal to young unemployed Australians and cut them off from support because that will motivate them to get back into the workforce,' despite the fact that we have got record high numbers of both unemployed young people and unemployed people overall in our economy.

The coalition's approach to this whole debate has been shameful. They have sought to perpetuate the outrageous fiction that somehow welfare is a career choice. You hear this from the Prime Minister almost daily in the parliament. Of course he is doing what Liberals have always done—concocting scenarios that malign certain sectors of society and turning people against one another. They know that if they repeat them often enough their cheer squad in sections of the media will promote their agenda without question. This is the divide and rule mentality writ large of the modern Liberal Party.

Young Australians do not want to be on welfare. They want to work. They want to contribute to their community and to society. The measures in this bill smack of the divisive politics that are the hallmark of this government, and Labor will not have a bar of it. We will offer young Australians a hand up when they are in need and we will never divide society into lifters and leaners, as that crew opposite do almost every day.

Over the past 30 years societies across the world have become increasingly divided as income and wealth inequality has grown, but Australia has bucked that trend so far. This is something that we on this side of the House are extremely proud of. In fact, we reduced poverty and shared wealth when we were in government in a far better way than any other government in the Western world. The Australian model is now recognised as the gold standard for achieving inclusive economic growth. An IMF report released last week confirms that Australia is one of the few countries that have resisted the trend of a shrinking middle class. This is largely because of initiatives put in place by progressive Labor governments over the last 30 years—a decent industrial relations system, a decent minimum wage, universal access to health and education, a progressive tax system, a decent and targeted transfer payments system and a decent retirement income system. They are the basis for inclusive growth. They are the basis for strong economic growth fairly shared. When it is fairly shared you grow much more strongly than otherwise. The trickle-down brigade over there are heading in the opposite direction. (Time expired)

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a fairytale we have just been subjected to in the House of Representatives. The Labor Treasurer who took us from zero net debt to $667 billion of debt and deficits approaching $50 billion a year was saying in this House that somehow we cannot achieve a surplus. The perpetrator of all of this just walked out the door. The reason we have high youth unemployment and unemployment in an unsuitable zone is the past seven years of a very bad Labor government, which in part was led by the former Treasurer, the member for Lilley, who has just left this room.

It is very difficult to understand how he could come here today and criticise this government putting forward the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015, which attempts to deal with the youth unemployment crisis that is facing our nation. This bill sends the right signal to young job seekers, young people of ability who are able to get a job. We are going to take some measures to ensure that it is not the case that they go straight from high school to the Centrelink office.

We have some points of difference with the member for Lilley. He does not see a problem with young people being on welfare. This is the view of the modern Labor Party. Once upon a time the Labor Party were the party of the workers. The trade union leaders had actual trades. I am not sure how many trade union leaders over there even have a trade these days—in fact, probably very few or none. They represented workers against their bosses. But what we are seeing at the moment in Labor's opposition to this legislation is that Labor has truly become the party of welfare, the party of the handout.

It was ironic for the member for Lilley to tell us that he supports a hand-up when we see youth unemployment at high levels, with young people taking welfare, and the Labor Party seems to think that is some sort of career choice—some sort of good deal for young people. The real form of poverty comes from sustained periods on welfare. The way out of poverty is for people to get jobs. The way to get jobs is to get a strong economy—to have a government dedicated to getting a strong economy, not to redistributing wealth, as the member for Lilley likes to say. That is taking wealth from the productive and handing it around. That works for a period of time, but you get to a point in a welfare state, which we are at now, where we have an enormous government debt and a government deficit, and the member for Lilley is content to say: 'Well, let's just keep on spending that money. There is no problem. We have no difficulty going forward.' That is not the reality of what any federal government will now face from this point going forward. It is a reality crunch which tells us that we cannot afford the current welfare state model and that we need to take measures to help get people back to work and to have a stronger economy generating more jobs and more prosperity.

I want to commend the Minister for Social Services for putting the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015, which is before us today, because this is a very balanced, very fair piece of legislation. Yes, it has taken some time to work with the sector to get to a bill of this nature, and it does very fairly deal with people who are unable to seek work, through many different facets. We have taken account of issues such as disability, impairment, single mothers or people who are pregnant. We are being very realistic in this bill about the circumstances, difficulties and dilemmas that young people face. But it is, of course, the right signal to say to young people: 'We expect you to be fully focused on getting a job all of the time.'

When you look now at all of our major cities, including many of the electorates that the Labor Party represents and that the member for Lilley would know about, we now have problems of intergenerational welfare, where whole families have been on welfare not simply for one generation but for more than a generation. This, of course, is no good way for these people to live. They do not want to live on welfare. They would like to get jobs and get moving. They would like their lives to progress. Real poverty comes about from intergenerational welfare. Real prosperity comes about from a strong economy providing jobs and people being able to access those jobs, and that is what this bill is about. It is about saying to all those able young people, 'Get a job when you leave high school; don't get into that welfare poverty trap,' because we know that, when a person gets onto welfare, they are more likely to stay on welfare. They are more likely to get trapped on welfare. They are more likely to lose their skills and focus over time the longer they spend on welfare.

Of course, the government, the Australian people, the Australian taxpayer and successive Labor and Liberal governments have provided free public education and access to university for almost anybody that wants to seek it in Australia, with a generous HECS loan system that is being reinforced by this government to ensure anybody can access university. We are prepared to pay for people to go to university to get a degree. We are prepared to pay for them to get another degree, to retrain to get a trade or to go through the VET sector. The government is prepared to pay for any young person to continue their training or retraining or whatever they have to do to find the right trade or get the right skill to go and get a job. Given that that is the attitude of the government, of the Australian people and of the taxpayer, all the measures in this bill before us are saying to those young people: 'That is what we want you to be doing. We don't want you to be claiming welfare.'

When you think about the situation in Australia today, there are plenty of small businesses all around this nation that would like to add more workers, and more young workers in particular. But we have the member for Lilley lecturing us about industrial relations unfairness. How is it fair that a very small business, a cafe, has to pay a higher penalty rate on a Sunday than the local McDonald's across the road? It makes no sense. It stops that small business from employing as many young people as it might like on a Sunday. It means that there are fewer shifts or, in many cases in regional areas, that small businesses are unable to open and take on a young worker. Without the flexibility in the labour market that small business needs—and I reiterate that I am talking specifically about small business and how the inflexibility of the industrial relations system affects it—how does this help young people? The answer is that it does not.

So we have a Labor Party that is rigidly opposed to labour market reform, except of course if you are prepared to offer a massive payment to an individual union, we have learnt. If, under the table, you hand over millions of dollars then you will get some productivity, some movement and some difference, but not if you want to take on young people for more shifts and, as a cafe, open your doors on a public holiday in a regional area. You will get zero flexibility from the Australian Labor Party. You will get not one iota of movement. That would generate hundreds of thousands of extra shifts and extra jobs across the country, but of course there is no big business that can offer a multimillion-dollar payment to a union to facilitate that. That, of course, is what we really see going on in youth unemployment in Australia today.

David Feeney (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, on a point of order, I appreciate that these contributions often get very willing and that there is typically an amount of latitude provided to speakers, but I think this speaker is casting aspersions upon members of this House that perhaps he needs to reflect on.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Please continue.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I understand why the member for Batman made that point of order. If he knows which members I am casting aspersions on, I would refer him to the royal commission. He could report those names, and we could then get on with identifying how these payments are made and what they are for. We will see.

Returning to youth employment, which is what I am speaking about, the member for Batman could listen very carefully, because this is all intertwined. The Labor party is opposing this bill because it is 'unfair' to young people. It is unfair to tell able young people who can get a job that they have a lifetime of welfare ahead of them. It is unfair to say, 'There'll be a handout for you at all times.' The reality of life is very different, and it is Orwellian for the member for Lilley, who has created so much dysfunction in our economy and disadvantage for young people through his industrial relations policies and his economic mismanagement, to tell us that we are somehow sending people into a bearpit where they will be crucified. That is the kind of language that he uses. This is the real world.

When people leave school, they are expected to get a job not to rush down the road to go to the local Centrelink office. It is not what we want young people to do. Of course there are circumstances and there is the reality of life as well on the other side of the coin where people are genuinely disadvantaged, where they do need the support of government and where they do need to go to the Centrelink office for various actual reasons. That is why this bill is so good. That is why the Minister for Social Services consulted so widely, including with organisations like ACOSS, organisations that deliver welfare services for young people and organisations that employ young people and assist young people to get jobs.

I know many business organisations that are desperate for young people's labour. I know many organisations that need skilled young workers urgently. We know that unions continue to push for younger and younger people to be paid adult wages. When they recently won their case at Fair Work for 21-year-olds to be paid adult wages, they said they are going to push for even younger. These sorts of things do not help young people. Your first job is not your last job. In today's economy, we know young people are going to have many, many career changes. There is nothing wrong with that in the modern economy. It is flexible and dynamic. It is growing fast. It is changing fast. Young people need to be taught to train, to retrain, to compete and to do whatever they can to improve themselves to live with the pace of life that we have today. That is the reality that will face most people seeking work today. Your first job in a cafe or a fast-food chain is not expected to be your last job. It is the sort of job you have while you retrain or go to uni, or do the education work that you need to do to get the job you are interested in.

That is why it is vital government policy to support young people in this. It is not harsh for us to say that if you are able and willing to go out and get a job then we really would like you to do that. Take the work that is out there. There is of course work out there in many places around Australia. You can go to rural and regional Australia where they are desperate for young workers and desperate for labour, where nobody will turn up to do the jobs that are there. That is a complete mismatch of supply and demand in our economy.

There are serious challenges that we face as a government and of course it is the right starting point to fairly say to young people and to put in this amendment that, excluding all of the circumstances—and you will find a list of all the circumstances in the proposed amendment for the legislation—we will still provide a lot of support for all those young people who need it, including additional funding for people with mental health concerns.

In the first four weeks, young job seekers will be meeting with a jobactive provider, agreeing to a job plan, developing an up-to-date resume, creating a job seeker profile on the JobSearch website, providing evidence of satisfactory job search with up to 20 job applications. We have provided extra funding for hardship relief as well.

It is very strange that the Labor Party object to this four-week period considering that it is a reasonable and effective compromise that says to young people, 'We're going to give you a jobactive plan for those four weeks to go and get a job.' We are not going to abandon these people. We are not going to say 'law of the jungle,' as the member for Lilley tried to say. He referred many times to Ayn Rand. What we are about here is saying to a young person just starting out on the cusp of life: 'Don't go to the Centrelink office. Come and get a job plan. Come and get some training. Get started on the right track in life. We'll do everything possible as a government and as a society to stop you going over to Centrelink because it is not good for you ultimately.'

This is the key point that the Labor Party miss. Welfare is not good for people ultimately. It should not be something that we want people to go on. It should not be something that we force through government policy to put people on. It is not good for people ultimately. Welfare is supposed to be a safety net and a hand-up not a handout. However, in our society today we have a political party that, when in government, seem addicted to getting people onto welfare and keeping them on welfare—intergenerational welfare, poverty traps. The real property traps in our society come about from welfare traps. I think the synergies are all there for people to see.

It should be the objective of any right-thinking government to get people off welfare, to stop people going onto welfare, to do what they can reasonably to prevent it and to encourage an economy that is vibrant and producing the jobs. That comes down to the small business sector. It is why we have intertwined small business measures in this bill, because we have employment measures tied up in this. For the Labor Party to separate this legislation and this amendment, and say this is the worst thing for young people that could ever happen is exactly the wrong message to send.

As a government, we are saying: 'We're prepared to do anything possible to help you get a job. We'll pay for your education. We'll pay for your training. We'll pay for your retraining. We'll assist you with an employment plan, with a jobactive plan, with a JobReady plan. We'll assist you with your CV. We'll assist you to find a job. We'll assist you in any way possible to get out there and get that job if you are an able person.' Of course, we are taking care of those people in genuine need and those people who are unable to do so with more funding. We are taking care of them by allowing them immediate access. The categories are well thought-out from the minister. This is a very important reform. It will assist what the government is doing to get young people into work and off welfare. I believe it has the majority support of the Australian people to do just that.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will start my contribution to this debate by saying that the Labor Party are about creating opportunity and access to work for young people. It is not about maintaining young people on welfare for their life. We are actually about trying to prevent that by putting in place the right sorts of supports that are needed. I found it very interesting to hear the previous speaker talk about intergenerational unemployment. That grew during the Howard years and it has been growing again since this government came to power, as has youth unemployment. It really shows a lack of understanding about the issues that impact young people when they are unemployed.

The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015 introduces the social security measures from the 2015 budget relating to youth allowance and Newstart for young people. I will say one thing positive at the commencement of my contribution: it is better than what was planned in 2014; still not good but better than what was planned in 2014, where the then minister was waging a vendetta against young people. This legislation shows that the minister and the government still really do not get the issues that face young people when they leave work.

Instead of having a six-month waiting period, as was in the original piece of legislation, it has now been shortened to a one-month waiting period, where young people—once they are unemployed—have got to go one month without any income support. To my way of thinking, it is un-Australian that a person should go one month without any income support at all. It means that that young person has got to rely on their family if they are lucky enough to have a family that has the financial resources to assist them. It also means that if a young person does not have a family who can support them, they are thrown into poverty. Where do they get their money?

There has actually been some work done that says that rather than reducing the time that a young person is unemployed, it can actually add to the time. I referred to comments made by the National Welfare Rights Network's policy officer, Gerard Thomas. He insists that the measures could lead to a greater level of welfare dependency. His rationale for the proposed new waiting times is that if a young person is subjected to them, they cannot—as I have already stated—call on family support or assistance from a charity. Young people would have insufficient means to even help them look for a job. The support may be available from agencies, but what about if a person has got no money to hop on a bus, no money to go for a job interview and no money to buy the clothes that they need to present for an interview? It shows just how flawed this legislation is.

On the increase in the requirement for a waiting period for the extension of the youth allowance from 22 to 24, when I was 24 I was a mother with a child. There are many, many young people who have been in the workforce for many years. They are adults; they are self-sufficient. For some reason outside of their control, they have lost their job. They have still got the same financial obligations that they had before they lost their job. They still need to pay their rent. If they fall behind in their rent, then they end up either being evicted or put on the TICA list. That is a list of people who fall behind with their rent. If they have a mortgage, they end up defaulting on their mortgage. Just because you are 23 or 24 does not mean that you do not have the same obligations as a person who is 30, 34 or 40.

I find it quite difficult to understand where the government is coming from here. Although, I think I do understand the thinking of the minister. Listening to some of the contributions to this debate, they say: 'A young person is unemployed because the young person basically chooses to be unemployed. If they wanted a job, they would get a job. This government is going to help them get a job by giving them no money. The only reason that they are unemployed is because they want to spend a life on welfare payments.' Has anyone on the other side of this House looked at the amount of money that somebody on youth allowance receives? It is hardly a luxurious lifestyle. Has anyone of the other side of this House looked at the amount of money a person receives a Newstart? Once again, people on those payments are living below the poverty line.

This mean-spirited government is attacking those people by saying that they will not pay them a youth allowance when they become unemployed that in line with every other benefit, welfare payment or whatever you members on the other side would like to call it. I tend to think of it as a supplement that will allow them to survive. If members on the other side of this House believe that by withholding money and saying, 'Hey mate, you're on own for a month,' is going to make a person more willing and more able to find a job, then they really need to have a look at the people who are unemployed and the number of jobs that are available. They need to actually get out into their electorates and talk to some young people.

I converse regularly with people within Shortland electorate and particularly young people. We have got quite a high level of unemployment. It is higher on the Central Coast than it is in Lake Macquarie. It is very difficult for young people, particularly those on the Central Coast, to travel to look for employment. In some areas on the Central Coast, there is one bus in in the morning and one bus out at night. They are private bus companies. They are in a number of little settlements in the northern part of Wyong Shire, which falls within Shortland electorate. There are very few job opportunities for those young people in that area. No matter how hard we make it for them to survive and no matter how many hurdles we place in front of them, it is not going to mean that they will find a job any quicker. All it means is that they are going to live in poverty for a month.

I would add that it is more likely that they will find it harder to find employment. I refer to the comments that I was talking about before. The National Welfare Rights Network's spokesperson stated that it is more likely that young people will become totally disengaged. Rather than becoming less reliant on welfare, they will become more likely to need long-term assistance and be long-term unemployed.

I heard the previous speaker refer to ACOSS. ACOSS has expressed concern about this legislation. Every community organisation that deals with people in this space has expressed concern about this legislation. Member after member on the other side of this House can stand up and criticise Labor, blame Labor for every woe that exists, but the bottom line is that this is their legislation, and what they should be doing is trying to assist young people to get the skills that they need to get into the workforce.

They have made it harder for young people to get apprenticeships. There are fewer apprenticeships than there previously were. Organisations that were funded to help young people find work, like Youth Connections, have lost funding. The recipe that we have here is supposed to end up with a cake of 'young person with a job and a future.' For that recipe, the government is delivering lots of sticks but very few carrots. I do not think the government really understands or is across this argument. Rather it is seeing it purely from a cost-saving point of view and is offering sticks rather than carrots. You really need to put a carrot in there as well as a stick, and you need to seriously address this.

I have already mentioned that this legislation has the potential to ensure that young people end up in an endless cycle of no income support, pushing young job seekers into poverty crisis and homelessness. I know there are some good people on the other side of this House. I know there are people there who do not want to just stand there and sling mud across the chamber. I challenge them—I really do—to think about this. We are in a fortunate position. If our children become unemployed, generally speaking we have the financial resources to help them. But there are many, many people in the community—and I would say the majority of the people that I represent here—who find it difficult to find the resources to help their young people, their children, when they are in a crisis situation. It is very sad indeed.

With the unemployment rate set to peak at 6.5 per cent or higher—and it will stay higher for a longer period of time—this type of punitive measure is very unfair and is bad for the economy. This government came to power with the promise to create one million jobs. What about the jobs that have disappeared under it? Jobs have been disappearing at a rate of knots since the Abbott government was elected, and many of those jobs are jobs that young people could have worked in.

Obviously we are opposed to these savage cuts that will impact on young people. It really demonstrates the mind set of this government: 'You pick the most vulnerable people in the community, those people that are least able to speak out and argue for themselves, and then you attack them.' Good government is about inclusion. Good government is about looking after everybody in our society. Good government is about ensuring that a young person leaving school actually can get a job. How do you best achieve it? By making them wait a month with no money or by putting in place the immediate assistance that they need, giving them support and ensuring that they will be able to get to that job interview, have the clothes to wear to that job interview and feel really good about themselves? They should not be treated as second-class citizens, as this legislation condemns them to be.

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. As a federal member of parliament, I have the great privilege of meeting many people throughout my electorate of Petrie, as I am sure you do in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker. Some of the Petrie electorate locals I get to meet are young people out there having a go, doing their study, trying to get work, finishing school. There are a whole range of people. The situation is different for everyone you meet. I have met young people who are going on to do further study, whether that is at TAFE or university. I have met people who are engaged with or going into the Australian Defence Force Gap Year that has recently been announced. I have met young people who have found full-time work—apprenticeships or other types of work—and young people who are taking part in the Work for the Dole program or the Green Army Program which we have introduced in the last couple of years.

In the bigger picture, we as a government and as members of parliament want to make sure that our policies and the decisions we make today have the best impact, not just on the lives of Australians today but on the lives of future Australians. We need to be thinking ahead, planning ahead, which is important. Part of that is balancing the budget. We need to do that. I raise that because the member for Lilley came in here before and spoke about all the bad things that this side of the House were doing and how there was not a budget crisis and we have gone away from that. The fact is that there is still a budget crisis. Every day we spend $100 million more than we earn. I consider that a bit of a crisis, when we have come off the back of eight budget deficits, six of which the member for Lilley brought down.

A number of us on this side of the House, including myself, were inspired to get involved in politics at the 2013 federal election because of the deficits that the member for Lilley and those opposite racked up, amongst other things. We have to think—and what those opposite do not think about—as we continue to increase debt is what that does to Australians, including young people, whom we are talking about here today. We already see the opposition heading into the next election, in just over 12 months, talking about more taxes on superannuation, talking about changes to negative gearing and talking about other changes they will need to make to fund the unfunded promises they have made. Of course, that affects young people in my electorate. It affects people who are in years 10, 11 and 12 right now who will go on to work. They are going to be hit with higher taxes. On this side of the House, we believe in lower taxes and smaller government. We make no apologies for that. We want to cut the red tape and we want to help businesses employ more people.

It would be detrimental of course to our country and our democracy if the Australian government did not support Australian families and individuals to help them participate economically and socially and to manage life's transitions. Safety nets should be in place. Safety nets are there for those who most need them. They give people a chance to bounce back into work, training or learning. In this bill there are strong safety nets. We know there are people who are not living at home, people who have children or people who are desperately in need of finances. That is available. So there are safety measures in place. There have been some important changes since last year, which those opposite asked for, and they are here in this bill this year, but none of that has been mentioned tonight.

The measures presented in this bill are vital to the sustainability of our social security system and Australia's budget. We want to make sure that the social security system is sustainable for the long term. Just because there is a change to welfare in some way does not mean that everyone will be worse off and will not be able to get back to work or into work. You have to have faith that young people will be able to get into work. From what I have heard tonight, those opposite believe that just because there is a change everyone is going to be worse off. I say that is not always the case and there are safety nets in place for those who are. The changes we have made from last year's budget by bringing the age down from 30 to 25 has cost the budget $1.9 billion. We have listened, and the process is in place whereby people are no longer waiting for six months; it is down to four weeks. That is a good thing. We do have to remember, though, that we have to have a welfare system that is there for people in need. As the Minister for Social Services said, we need to make sure we do not see young Australians seeking out welfare as a career choice. Most people we know do not do that, but some may think, 'When I leave school, if I go straight onto welfare I do not need to look hard for work'. As the minister said, 'We do not want to see a shuttle run from the school gate to the Centrelink door.'

These sensible measures are there to try to help young people find full-time work. That is what we want to see; we want to see young people get work. We do not want to see them stuck in a life of welfare. Some of the changes here are quite reasonable—very reasonable. The bill will introduce four 2015 budget measures in the social services portfolio, along with certain other measure from the 2014 budget and earlier fiscal decisions. Importantly, the four-week waiting period for youth income support will replace the current measure requiring young people, with full capacity, to wait one week. It is not a long time, is it? If you finish school, currently you wait one week before you go onto youth allowance and so forth, and we are talking about four weeks—not six months but four weeks. That is not a long time to wait. We know that many people have been at home for 12 years studying. They have been doing their study at school. Often at the end of year 12 they will go away. They will go away for Schoolies, they will have Christmas and they will spend time with their families. Four weeks is not an unreasonable time to wait. As I said before, there are strong safety nets in place for those who are particularly in financial dire straits.

We want to make sure that people get into work, and we need to encourage everything we can to help people to do that. Having a sustainable welfare system for those who most need it is part of that plan to show that it is sustainable for the long term for those who are most in need of work. The one thing we can all do, and the one thing that I like to do as the federal member for Petrie, is to encourage young people. I am positive with young people. I say to them: 'If you're looking for work, here are some practical tips for your resume and how to get that job. You don't necessarily have to write your age in and you don't have to have every year there. Some of that is not relevant to employers.' We want to give them a little bit and talk about the positives. Then, if they can get an interview, that is great. What do employers look for at an interview? They want someone with good eye contact, they want someone who is dressed well, they want someone with a good handshake and they want someone—above everything else—with a good work ethic who is productive.

These are important points to teach people. They are important things to talk about when we are out there in our electorates. I say to members opposite, why not do that as well? Instead of looking for the worst in every situation—'Geez, we've gone from one week to four weeks'—remember that last year we were looking at six months, and we are bringing that down. What about something positive? What about talking to young people and saying, 'Look, you can do this.' We do have a plan for jobs. We saw that in our $5.5 billion small business package with the instant tax write-off and other measures to encourage small business. We know that small businesses do create jobs. If we can get them firing, and if we can get them doing well, then there are more jobs available

But one way that we do not do it is to increase taxes all the time. And if you are addicted to debt, like those opposite—like the Labor Party—you have to increase taxes; you have to keep doing it. So we have to ensure that the budget is sustainable.

As I said before, the Treasurer is slowly coming back to surplus. I believe that is important. We should not lose track of that. We do need to come back to surplus in the interests of all Australians—for businesses, for those people who are retired and who do not want to see their cost of living increase and for young people who are moving into the workforce and who do not want to pay higher taxes down the track. With safety nets in place not every change to the welfare system is bad, and that is what we need to look at.

Of course, we are a country with tremendous opportunities. I believe it is just so important for people to identify what it is that they want out of life and to go for it.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is not a serious attempt to deal with youth unemployment. It is not some way of improving the opportunities for Australia's young to be able to get out there, take up meaningful, long-term employment and make a contribution to the broader economy, the community and their own families and improve the options in their own lives. This Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015 is really just a continued attack on young Australians.

No-one could seriously believe the proposition that withholding support to Newstart allowance by a month is in some way going to generate a massive lift and uptake in employment by young people. Bearing in mind the 2014 budget, this is a move from what was contained in that budget, going from a six-month wait down to the 2015 budget one-month wait. But in its wake, does it actually do anything to improve the ability of young people to get a job? The answer is no. This is really just a budget cut that appeals to the prejudice of some who believe that if young people really want to get a job that they can go out there and find it and that it will be there waiting.

I think it portrays two things: firstly, that unemployment right at this point in this country is higher now than it was during the GFC, and so it is harder to find work. In terms of youth unemployment we know that there is a massive difference between the general unemployment rate and youth unemployment. The second issue is that it is not simply a matter of young people clicking their fingers and finding a job. A modern economy, particularly ours, which is going through transition—and I do want to linger on that a bit longer later in my contribution—demands modern skills. It demands a lot more in training people and getting young people ready for the legitimate expectations of our employers, rather than believing you will just simply get it.

And so, of itself, just believing that this simple measure alone will assist young people is laughable. It will not be the case whatsoever. Getting young people working, particularly in this day and age, requires a very thorough and a much longer-term view about what is required to get them ready for employers. I believe, again, that it is to the benefit of the young person that they be able to be flexible enough to transition from job to job through the course of their work life. But also, their employer rightly expects that the young people who turn up to the door will be able to meet the inherent requirements of the role that they are seeking.

As I said, it is a bit surreal to believe that this bill, of itself, will be a major spur or incentive to drive young people on to get employment. Basically, it is the latest cut to young Australians. We opposed last year's attempt to leave young job seekers with nothing to live on for six months. As has rightly been reflected on by others, in the course of four weeks you still have to eat, you still have to pay bills and you still have to meet the requirements of living in a modern society. So it is a very punitive action, which is not actually designed, as I have said repeatedly in my contribution to this point, to address the types of things that will improve the opportunities for young people to get work.

I see it in my area—and I reflect on some of the comments that have been made. The member for Mitchell, during his remarks—as have others—talked about the scourge of intergenerational unemployment. I see that in my area. This is actually a salutary lesson about the perils of long-term unemployment, when people get stuck in long-term unemployment and when they do not find jobs quickly enough. If they have been through a period of transition—in some cases we have had big, wholesale redundancy programs go through some of our major employers and those people with specialised skills do not have the ability to move rapidly, freely or flexibly to other employment—and if they are not picked up and out of that trap of long-term unemployment, they can sit there for years.

I have seen it in my area—the children of those people watch their parent just basically count down the days without going into a job and then that becomes the new norm within that family. I am certainly motivated, and recognise that welfare of itself is not the solution to people's longer-term prosperity. A lot of people in my area know that to be the case as well. But, at the same time, you cannot eat grass. You cannot live simply on hope and nothing else. You do need to find a way from time to time to get you through, as long as that does not become an ongoing source of income support—that being welfare. That is an important point to bear in mind.

I come back to that point: we need to avoid people getting into the situation of long-term unemployment. But for younger people there is a whole string of things that do need to be undertaken to ensure that they do not get caught in that trap. I have seen this on the ground with some particularly good programs—some things that have made a real difference. For instance, Youth Connections. And I saw this through Marist Youth Care, operating out of Blacktown but also working in my neck of the woods. I saw them train up young people and put them into temporary positions where they got their work experience. They then went on to employment, particularly young Aboriginals in my area who have been able to do the social work course through Marist Youth Care. They get into employment and go back into their own families, who have battled with long-term unemployment. You see them spur their families on to get out there and break the cycle of unemployment. People within the family can get trained up or skilled up, opening up options for them to change the situation they are in and see what they can do. It has been hugely successful in transforming people's lives, not just in getting employment but also in changing their outlook on life. And this is not just in the area of social work. I saw Marist Youth Care, working in tandem with Mission Australia and Beacon Foundation, get young people trained up in a variety of different roles on the site of a major development in my area, the Sydney Business Park, through the application of Youth Connections funding. Other major employers like IKEA have taken on young people who have been identified through that process. In a major store that IKEA has just opened in Marsden Park in the Chifley electorate, nearly 73 per cent of the employees are from local suburbs. A lot of them are young people, trained up through programs funded by the federal government, like Youth Connections, that help get young people job ready. As I said before, you cannot expect to click your fingers and get into a role. You do need to get trained up and make sure that your skills are relevant to what your employer needs—and I saw that happen in my area.

What happened to a program like Youth Connections that made a difference on the ground? If you had invested in that type of program you would have thought that it would survive. No, it did not—it actually got cut. The funds for Youth Connections in our area were cut. Marist Youth Care, to their very great credit, relied on other sources of income within their organisation to maintain the training program, but they had to run down their funds to do so. This is wrong. You have a choice between making a punitive cut—as is evidenced in this program, which will not be able to dedicate anything more toward getting people trained up in an effective and meaningful long-term manner—or investing in skills. The general community gets that this type of spending is not a cost; it is an investment in upskilling young people in our community. People get that it is an important longer term goal that has the benefit of making sure that the skills are there for employers that need them to maintain economic activity in this country.

It is even more important when you take on board this point: manual and unskilled jobs—the jobs that you could just walk into that existed in times past, the jobs that frame the view of some people that believe that young people can just get a job if they want to, if they just go out and seek it—the jobs of that era are going. They are disappearing before our eyes. Technology is disrupting this. These jobs will not be there in the future. The demand is on us in this parliament to think ahead about the jobs of the future and get people trained up. You need to be able to skill those people up with a very long term view. It starts in schools, in getting people ready to be able to negotiate their way through technological change, and having the skills that can allow them to integrate technology in their learning and in the way that they work. That is why we have been talking so much about coding being taught in primary schools. It is not so much for the mere fact that you learn coding; you start to get the development of computational thinking and start to recognise how technology works, framing the way you think about the world in that way. That is why that is important.

If you were serious about skilling up young people, you would not be denying them years 5 and 6 of the Gonski funding, which represents a massive cut to education. This government will not fund years 5 and 6, the $30 billion cut that we go on about in the budget, which translates to $270 million over 10 years in my electorate, making it amongst the worst affected. That will not skill young people up. That will not help them get on a pathway for the next level of training that they need—vocational training, for example. To date, the government's track record in that space is not one that it can be proud of. There were $1 billion in cuts to apprenticeship programs in the 2014-15 budget. The government replaced apprentice support with apprentice debt, they rebadged and cut funding to the Australian apprenticeship centres, they abolished the Joint Group Training Program and they have not put forward any new ideas for training people for the jobs of the future. This is contained in a media statement by my colleague the member for Cunningham, the shadow minister for vocational education.

So there were cuts to school funding through Gonski and cuts to vocational education. What about tertiary education? What about getting people through higher education to build their skills up there? On this side of the fence, we have been talking about the need to build STEM skills—science, technology, engineering, mathematics—and get a focus and a push on there, because these are the skill shortages that are crippling our country. I spoke about it when I was on the other side of the House and I am speaking about it on this side of the House. We do have big skill shortages in the digital economy and it has been repeated recently through CEDA's work, Deloitte, the Crossroads report by StartupAUS—you name it. A whole stack of people that are at the leading edge of technology in this country are saying that we simply do not have the people here that will help power the development of this sector in the years to come.

When I was in the United States earlier this year I was staggered to find that 20,000 Australians are working in Silicon Valley, who we could well do with here. It is understandable that they go over there for the experience and skill development, but 20,000 over there means we have 20,000 fewer here, and we are not training them up. So what happens in terms of higher education? We have seen the types of reforms that the government have flagged. They dispute our claim that this will lead to $100,000 degrees; we actually have good evidence to back up our concern. Regardless of what you think, it is clear that prices for degrees will go up, and if you are trying to have more people go into higher education to build up their skills that price signal will be an impact. It will weigh heavily on people as to whether or not they will be able to take on those degrees. From my point of view, the danger is that universities like the University of Western Sydney, recognising that people may not have the capacity to pay, will have to make a choice either to pass the fee increase on or to simply make cuts to the quality of education and therefore provide a lower standard, a lower quality, a second-class education to the people of Western Sydney. That is something I am genuinely fearful of. The whole issue of youth employment and getting people ready for work is not a simplistic one.

People may have a different opinion on some of the things that I have said tonight in this contribution. But it is undeniable that, if you want young people ready for the world of work, if you want them to be able to exercise the full range of opportunities before them, you need to do make a genuine, long-term investment in their skills development to make sure, not only that they have the skills for the workforce but, importantly, that they have a capacity and a flexibility to change; because, as we all know, it is not like days of old when you would get a job in one place and retire from there with a gold watch. Those days are well and truly gone. Now, you will go through a number of different jobs, you will require a number of different skills, and you will need to be flexible as you move. We need to get young people ready for that.

The type of legislation we are debating does not fix that. This type of legislation is just punitive. It is designed to attract a prejudice or to mask a budget cut. It will not meaningfully lead to the types of skills development that we need to ensure that people do not need to rely on welfare. And I am all for not relying on welfare; I am all for having meaningful long-term prosperous employment.

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. As we have heard, this bill introduces a number of important measures in the social services portfolio, including the 2015 budget measures and several measures previously introduced in the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 4) Bill 2014.

Tonight I would like to focus on what our government is doing to help get young people into work. That is very much the focus of the initiatives and the measures that are contained in this bill. Reflecting on some of the recent contributions in this debate from members opposite, I find it disappointing to hear about this focus on fairness and on what our government is doing—when, let's not forget, we have inherited a terrible $557 billion trajectory of debt and deficit. It was quite laughable to hear the member for Lilley talk about the importance of delivering a surplus. He delivered six record deficits and never delivered a surplus; trashed our economy. We came into government in 2013 with rising unemployment.

I am very pleased to say that we are all focused, on both sides of the House, on the importance of measures to help young people get into work. I am very pleased to say that under this government we are creating jobs at three times the rate that Labor was doing in its last year in office. We are seeing a downward trajectory on unemployment from 6.25 per cent to six per cent. We are seeing growing confidence. We are seeing great excitement about the importance we are placing on small business. Let's not forget one of the most important employers for young people is small business.

In the previous government 519,000 people lost their jobs across the small business sector. In the Geelong region, which I proudly represent, the Corangamite electorate, so many young people get their first start in life in a small business. It was really a disgraceful record. That is why we have put so much effort into turning around the fortunes of small business—the $20,000 instant asset tax write-off, the tax cut, the tax discount for unincorporated small businesses. The poor old Leader of the Opposition forgot two-thirds of small business in his budget reply speech, as we well recall. We have a very strong focus because we know how important small business is in driving our economy and we know how important small business is in employing young people. We are proudly championing our measures for small business as part of our $5.5 billion Jobs and Small Business package under the budget.

I am going to focus tonight on the measure which introduces a four-week waiting period for youth under 25. We are well aware of course that the measure replaces the under-30s measure in the 2014-15 budget. The total cost of the reversal is $1.8 billion. So it is a very significant investment that we are making. But I do want to reflect on this change in policy. It was the right decision. It is very important to point out that there were a number of very important exemptions to that six month wait that was proposed in that budget; nevertheless, I was a strong advocate for a change in that policy and I am delighted that the Social Services Minister and the previous minister were so receptive to my representations on behalf of young people in Corangamite. We are facing some unemployment challenges; there is no doubt about it. But I have to say that we are a region of great opportunity.

Just on the weekend I was talking about the new regional rail link and the fact that it is now quicker to travel from Geelong to Southern Cross Station than it is from many outer suburbs of Melbourne. That presents our region with some great opportunities to move down to Geelong—even if you do need to continue to work in Melbourne—to build a house, to access the great schools, to access the great hospitals, to access the great lifestyle and to raise a family in our great part of the world.

From 1 July 2016, as set out in this budget, young people under 25 who are the most job-ready who apply for youth allowance other or special benefit will serve a four-week waiting period before becoming eligible for a payment. It is important to point out that job-ready means someone who lives in an area with good employment opportunities, who has reasonable language, literacy and numeracy skills and recent work experience. But you would not know that if you listened to members opposite. There are in fact a range of important exemptions. We recognise that some young people do need that assistance straight away. We want to make sure that this measure gives young people the incentive to go out and look for work, not to walk straight from the school gate to Centrelink. We want to avoid that culture. We want to positively drive the incentive for young people to go out and look for their opportunities and we want to support them on the way.

I just want to make it very clear that students will not be subject to the four-week waiting period. And in recognition of the importance of education and training in preventing future unemployment, young people who return to school or who take up full-time vocational education or university study will be able to seek more suitable payments and will therefore not be subject to the waiting period. Job seekers who have been assessed as having significant barriers to finding a job will also not be required to serve the four-week waiting period. I often talk about the importance of governing with compassion and care. In these exemptions, we are seeing a government that is incredibly mindful that not all young kids get the best start in life. Not all young kids live in a happy home. There are many young people who live in very difficult circumstances and they need our help from day one.

There are a range of other important exemptions to the four-week waiting period. If someone has served a four-week waiting period in the last six months, they will not have to do so again. If someone has a disability or an activity test exemption—so if they are pregnant or in the last six weeks of their pregnancy—they will not have to serve this waiting period. Of course there are a couple of other important exemptions as well. The government will make sure that only youths aged 16 to 25 will have to serve the waiting period. There are some cases where a person under 16 can be on a special benefit.

What we are trying to do is strike the right balance because it is estimated that 6.5 million young people under the age of 25 are living at home with one or two parents. What is important to a government that governs with compassion, governs with care is that there is also a ministerial discretion where the minister has the power to draft new exemptions if they are required. I particularly want to commend the Minister for Social Services for the way that he has responded to this challenge. Let's not forget we have a massive challenge in fixing Labor's mess, fixing the debt and deficit that we inherited, trying to find those savings but in a responsible and fair way.

Boy oh boy, have we seen a more appalling example of unfairness than the Labor Party's decision to oppose an increase in the pension of some $30 a fortnight for the most vulnerable of pensioners? There are members opposite who are also shaking their heads privately. It was a callous decision. It was a decision that shows that the modern Labor Party has utterly lost its way.

In the time remaining, I want to talk about a very important youth employment strategy. What we saw previously, which is why we never saw any inroads into the terrible situation that we do have in some parts of the country with youth unemployment, was Labor tinkering at the edges. What we are delivering in this budget is a $331-million youth employment strategy. This includes a $212 million transition to work program to help disengaged young people aged 15 to 21 years become job ready. This program will commence on 1 January 2016. Eligible young job seekers will receive intensive support from community-based organisations, in many respects doing a far broader job than was done under Youth Connections. This is a far more comprehensive program that looks at every possible need for a young disengaged person wanting to get out of the welfare trap and find that job. I know there is great interest in this program among the many agencies across my electorate of Corangamite who work so hard to help those who most need help. This is a fantastic program. It will be supplemented by $106 million for intensive support to vulnerable young people most at risk of long-term unemployment including migrants, parents and those who have experienced mental illness.

The government has also delivered an $18-million national work experience program for around 6,000 job seekers annually, particularly young people. This, again, is incredibly important in giving young people opportunity, giving them confidence and in giving employers confidence that they can take someone on and see how someone can blossom and flourish in the role. It gives employers incentives to you hire a young person.

Very importantly, and we saw none of these measures under the previous Labor government, employers now have the option of offering a $6,500 wage subsidy to a young person who is a job seeker. This is an incredibly important measure, again driving that incentive for employers to say, 'I am going to employ someone young.' There is an incentive there. Sometimes there are additional resources required to train someone who is young, who does not have the same experience. It is an incredibly important incentive. Along with the national work experience program, along with the wage subsidy, there is also $14-million early school leaver program to improve educational outcomes. What we are seeing is a very comprehensive set of measures to address youth unemployment in my electorate and across the nation and, simply speaking, these were not the sorts of measures that we saw under the previous government. I have to say it is disappointing that we are not seeing support for the bill. Some of these measures will revolutionise the life of a young person.

I am very proud of what we are also doing locally. For the Geelong Employment Connections Program, we have just added another $1.3 million, which is to help fund the jobs fair. There was $95,000 for the jobs fair over two days, last Friday and Saturday. It was a great success and made sure that every possible job was presented together in a cohesive way bringing together job seekers, agencies and other organisations. That money will be used over the next two years to create job creation programs, grassroots programs. Already there is an example, the 45 plus program. I visited a group who were attending that program just recently and around four to five have now secured full-time work, which is incredibly exciting.

The Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund, a program that has delivered some 750 jobs and is well on the way to delivering close to 1,000 jobs, as we see the last round close and further applications be considered, is an incredibly important fund for our region. All of the $15 million which is allocated as the Commonwealth spend has been provided by our government. There is only $4.5 million from the state, and unfortunately the $7.5 million promised by the state Victorian government has been reneged upon. They are now refusing to place that money into the fund, which frankly is a disgrace which is hurting our region and hurting job seekers.

Our $155 million Growth Fund focused on areas affected by the end of car manufacturing—a very important fund. There is a $30 million Skills and Training Initiative, a $15 million boost to the Automotive Industry Structural Adjustment Program, $20 million in the Automotive Diversification Program and a $60 million Next Generation Manufacturing Investment Program.

Our industry growth centres are being rolled out. I am working very hard advocating for the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre to come to our region. We have the ABS Centre of Excellence and the NDIA headquarters—very important Commonwealth agencies in our region delivering jobs. P-TECH is a very important initiative in our schools linking industry with a disadvantaged school, and the first one is to be rolled out in Corangamite. So there are many important measures to help young people get into work.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like the previous speaker, I also rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. But, unlike the member for Corangamite, I do so on the basis of condemning this government for its continued attack on young people. This legislation is about leaving job seekers under 25 years of age with nothing to live on for a month. This is a cruel and insensitive approach, particularly dealing with 54,000 or so young people across the country, and quite frankly has the potential of pushing young people into a cycle of poverty.

Job seekers, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, as you would know from your own area, need support to find a job, not savage attacks that make it harder not only to find work but to survive. I have said on many occasions in this place that giving a person a job is providing someone with a future. Hopefully, there are not many people here who quarrel with that. But giving a young person a job is giving them not only the best start in their lives, going into their young adult lives, but also an opportunity to grow and become a productive member of our community.

Young people in my electorate have many things to be proud of. They grow up in what is obviously one of the most vibrant, colourful and diverse communities, but regrettably, for various reasons, a significant portion of pockets of disadvantage besets my electorate. Regrettably, we have areas of extremely high youth unemployment. These are things that we need to address. We need to address them positively, not simply by taking the stick to people in their most vulnerable period, when they are trying to find employment. In south-west Sydney the unemployment rate for young people between 15 and 24 years of age is hovering around 20 per cent. I think the yearly average is approaching about 15 per cent. Overall unemployment rates are forecast to peak at 6½ per cent. However, in south-west Sydney—as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker—the unemployment rate is already at 8½ per cent now.

Brutally cutting the support for young people trying to enter the workforce is not only unfair; it is simply bad for the economy. Unemployment is clearly an issue, but it is an issue that can only be resolved through investment in education and training and the creation of new and sustainable job opportunities. Instead, this government, along with its various state counterparts—and I refer to the New South Wales government in that—has done the exact opposite. They have cut and continue to cut from our schools and our TAFE colleges, along with doing everything to make getting a university education out of the reach of many, certainly in my community. This government is short-sighted in what is needed to devise a long-term strategy to address serious social issues instead of choosing to attack young people at what could be probably the most vulnerable period of their lives.

It does not matter whether it is one month or six months; we will not be supporting measures which push young people into poverty and hardship. One month is too long for a job seeker to live on nothing. Not only are they going to be denied funds to survive; they will also be denied funds to support gaining the skills they need for employment and even the very basics of getting transport to employment. This is just retrograde legislation.

The opportunity for young people to gain skills which are transferable into employment is high on the agenda in electorates like mine. As I said, we do have a very high level of youth unemployment. We have a vested interest in seeing that those skills that people acquire are not only readily transferable into employment but, from an employee's perspective, gateways into job opportunities. We do not want young people left with nothing to live on, with little or no support as they are attempting to enter the workforce.

This bill, in which Minister Morrison and Tony Abbott are pressing ahead with changes, also comes at a time when they are doing the same with respect to the Newstart allowance. They are pushing job seekers between the ages of 22 and 24 from Newstart onto the youth allowance. That means a cut of at least $48 a week for very young, vulnerable people. That is equivalent to almost $2½ thousand a year. This government is pushing people into poverty. This legislation represents the abandonment of young people by a government clearly out of touch with the needs of young Australians.

This government is willing to attack income support for young people, pushing many into a cycle of poverty, crisis and homelessness. That comes at the same time that this government has also cut funds to homelessness services. It is pretty heartless. You cannot have it both ways. You are either going to provide assistance for young people to get jobs but, on the other hand, where it is difficult you do not attack services for the homeless as well. In a very condescending way, the Treasurer gave advice to young people and to homeless people in Sydney. Only a week or two back, he made it very clear to people. No doubt you will recall his advice, given gratuitously and publicly—'You should get yourself a good job, a well-paid job.' It is all very well if you have the skills to compete for a good and well-paid job, but we are talking about people who are trying to get any job, and this is the way they treat them. So much for the cavalier advice from the Treasurer, who is not exactly skinflint himself, who was trying to indicate to people that it is pretty simple, that you just get a better paid job.

In this place we should be concentrating on our efforts in ensuring nobody is left behind, particularly the most vulnerable. Where does it leave those who are struggling to find work, who are left without any material support? I am sure this government realises it, but if they do not let me tell them. It leaves them on the street. In my community—and this goes for many on this side as well as on the government side—not every young person has the support of a caring and loving home to go back to. How are some of the already strained community service providers out there going to handle the influx of young people seeking shelter and basic necessities, particularly when their funds have also been cut?

Parliament has already rejected this attack on vulnerable young people once, albeit in an even more extreme form, but this policy should now be scrapped completely. It reflects the gross unfairness at the heart of the budget. It is clear that Tony Abbott and Minister Morrison have basically learnt nothing from last year's budget. Given the level of youth unemployment, it is vital that this parliament plays a role in encouraging young people to continue with their education and in turn encouraging our local businesses to reward these efforts. You do not do that through starvation.

The lack of education and training and therefore adequate skills in the youth labour force is the main reason there are few employment opportunities in this group. I commend some of the local employers in my community who are doing their part to ensure that young people receive not only adequate training and assistance but also that they are able to avail themselves of emerging opportunities. These employers show compassion and forbearance but most of all they show they are prepared to back young people.

The Mounties Club in my electorate is a very large club and a very large employer. When I sat down with their CEO, he was able to tell me that 35 per cent of their staff is under 25 years of age. This is an example of an employer going truly above and beyond what would be expected in order to address youth unemployment at a local level. The Mounties has also worked very closely with the local high schools and education providers such as TAFE to provide work experience opportunities, traineeships and apprenticeships to students. The Mounties Club is also the principal sponsor of the Street University in Liverpool, which does many things to assist young people and provides an on-site café, giving young people training to assist them to become job ready.

Another person I would like to mention is Harry Hunt, who has received an Order of Australia. Harry is also the CEO of Comfort Inn Hunts Motel at Liverpool. More importantly for the community he is also the president of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. He has long been part of the battle to keep young people employed. He has identified that this is one of the most important areas that must be tackled in the Fairfield-Liverpool area. We must not allow young people who are deprived of adequate training and support today to become the long-term unemployed of tomorrow. Tackling this issue now is a vital investment in our future, not just in the future of unemployed people. This is about building our community. It is about making decisions that would benefit young people, helping them to become more job ready and to leading them to a successful life where they can support a family and maintain their own home. Unfortunately, this bill represents a heartless attack on young people, blaming them for this government's decisions, which have led to a lack of employment opportunities, punishing them when they are most vulnerable.

I am proud to be part of the Labor Party, the party which stands up for young people in this nation. In our time in government, do not forget we commissioned more than 72 jobs and skills expos. In the limited time I have left, in terms of the last of the jobs expos I hosted in my electorate, we had more than 5,000 young people come through the doors at the Whitlam Leisure Centre where there were more than 1,020 full-time and part-time job opportunities on offer

There were 88 exhibitors at that expo. Those exhibitors, the employers who supported it, took 1,562 resumes from job seekers seeking to gain local employment. More importantly, on the day we held this job expo 370 young job seekers were linked directly with job opportunities, so 370 young people went away from the job expo with employment.

That is an example of getting out and changing lives for the better. That is not using a stick—threatening people with starvation unless they find a job within a month when there is nothing available. This government needs to take a positive approach to helping young people realise their potential, finding appropriate job opportunities for them and in turn supporting our economy and our future.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Fowler for his contribution to this important debate on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. I am also happy to speak on this bill because, like the member for Fowler, I am happy to stand up for Australia's youth. The Abbott government is not standing up for them by condemning them to a month without support. The Irish band U2 said that you glorify the past when the future dries up—and this Prime Minister personifies that attitude. He is not just conservative and trying to maintain the status quo; he is trying to take us backwards. He is regressive. Under this Prime Minister we see attacks on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, with over $500 million cut from their budget, and on workplaces. The government should be providing opportunities as Australia develops but this Prime Minister is taking us backwards, particularly when it comes to the youth. It is targeting the most vulnerable in our community and, sadly, young people too often fall into that category.

Nationally youth unemployment is currently around 14 per cent. Sadly, in Queensland youth unemployment is higher than the national average at 14.3 per cent. It is particularly high in a couple of areas. Youth unemployment is a particular problem in Cairns. The Abbott government's northern Australia policy is going to make it easier for people on backpacker visas and the like to go into those areas where there is high youth unemployment. I am hoping that with your support, Deputy Speaker Ewen Jones, we will be able to nuance that so we do not take jobs away from young North Queenslanders. I am sure you will do that, Deputy Speaker.

In 2014 there were 56,800 long-term unemployed young people aged between 15 and 24 in Australia. That is the context in which we need to see this legislation. This legislation was put forward by an out of touch government that seems to think it is necessary to provide a disincentive so young people will not become disengaged and reliant on government support. The government sees no link between the number of youth out of work and the lack of jobs.

In my electorate of Moreton there are good, eager, hardworking kids looking for an opportunity. They definitely want to work. That is not just my view; there have been surveys undertaken by credible groups, such as Mission Australia, that back that up. They say that the majority of young people want to find a job. So put aside what the right-wing radio shock jocks are saying, the youth of today are the same as youth have always been—a little different from those in their middle age or older. They are a bit different but they are still keen to make their mark.

It is not easy for the young people of today with long-term unemployment issues and there are lots of other barriers to them obtaining a job. As I said, there are not many jobs available. We have unemployment at the moment at six per cent, but the Treasurer's own budget papers say that unemployment will rise to 6½ per cent. That is what the government is saying in its own budget papers. That will mean it will be harder for young people to grab a job. We know there are not many full-time jobs available. Job security has decreased over time. We have young people lacking experience to get a job. That is an age-old problem. Also employers are often unwilling to hire young people. They can also have transport problems. We see a government proudly committed to not investing in public transport in our cities, which is used most by young people to get to work.

The unemployment figure for young people is significantly higher than for the general population and has been rising since 2008. So the government through this bill wants to put in place measures that are going to make it even harder for youth at a time in their life which is difficult already, when they are just making decisions as an adult with all the challenges that come with that. We do not have the same initiation ceremonies that other communities have. It is a difficult rite of passage. Schoolies is not a rite of passage that sensible tribes would have.

This unfair piece of government legislation will change the eligibility for Newstart. Youth aged between 22 and 24 will now not be eligible for the Newstart allowance if they are unemployed. Those 22- to 24-year-olds who want to work and cannot find employment will now be forced to apply for the youth allowance, an allowance that is designed for students. For an unemployed youth living away from home this change in eligibility for Newstart will mean that rather than receiving $519.20 each fortnight while they are trying to find work they will now receive only $426.80 per fortnight. That change from $519 down to $426 is a change from $37 a day, which anyone would testify is not a lot of money, to $30 a day. That is to pay for all living expenses—accommodation, food, medication, transport and, heaven forbid, a young person's relaxation time. They will get $30 a day. I think the Treasurer pays more than $30 for his cigars. Thirty dollars a day is phenomenal. That $7 a day change for these youths could be the cost of a bus fare or a train ticket to go to an interview or, if they live in Gippsland, petrol to put in their car to go for a job application.

The government, in its explanatory memorandum to this bill, says:

The key aim of this measure is to provide incentives to young unemployed people to obtain the relevant education and training to increase employability.

One thing the explanatory memorandum does not explain is how these youth are to afford the education and training that the government clearly wants them to get. If Education Minister Christopher Pyne's $100,000 degrees become reality, this will be even harder. He seems determined to change the way equality and opportunity are rolled out in Australia.

Not all youth want or need to be further trained. What they all do need is the support to be able to find a job. That means the ability to 'job hunt'. Admittedly, online gives them some opportunities that they did not have 50 years ago, but the reality is you still need to get in front of an employer, and that requires transport, which costs money—money that youth on the lower youth allowance will not have if they are looking for a good job. As the Treasurer so kindly said to them, if they want to be able to buy a house—particularly in Sydney, where the median house price is about $900,000—they have to get a good job with a good wage.

The other unfair provision this bill will introduce is a waiting period for new claimants of youth allowance who are job seekers, and that will commence in a year's time, on 1 July 2016. The Labor Party fought long and hard last year to stop this government leaving unemployed youth with nothing to live on for six months. I did not hear a chorus of opposition from those opposite at that cruel policy, but now the government, after action from ACOSS, the Labor Party and all concerned people—including grandparents who are concerned about this harsh policy being visited upon their grandchildren—want to leave them with nothing to live on for one month—for 30 days. Whether it is one month or six months, if they have nothing to live on it is going to be extraordinarily difficult for our youth. How does the government expect these youth to feed themselves, pay rent, buy medication and then present themselves to interviews in such a way that they are attractive to a potential employer, particularly if we are talking about young people who are in a strained relationship with their families? You cannot assume that all young people have parents who are willing and able to provide that sort of support. That is an arrogant assumption to make and does not reflect the current Australian Bureau of Statistics data on what families are in Australia. Without parental support, these youth will be living on fresh air for an entire month, or lining up at the soup kitchens. Is that the sort of policy we want in modern Australia?

But the unfairness of this bill does not stop there. To become eligible for the youth allowance, these unemployed youth will have to jump through a further hoop: they will be subject to a 'new rapid activation strategy' called RapidConnect Plus. The government is demanding that they undertake additional job search activities during the four-week period before they receive any income support. At the very time that these youth will have no income support whatsoever, the government is asking them to undertake more job search activities.

Ms Henderson interjecting—

How would the people of the Geelong area find it if they sent their children out to not only have no money but also have to go out and look for a job, particularly at a time when manufacturing is collapsing under this government? Manufacturing, which was once the lifeblood of the Corangamite and Geelong areas, is now collapsing under this government, because it does not support manufacturing in the long term.

This bill is punitive—cruel and unusual punishment. It will punish youth who cannot find work. Why should these youth be disadvantaged more than any other sector of our society? Why are they not afforded the same basic standard of living that our government will give to every other citizen? This government is forcing our youth into poverty. These measures are unjustified and will cause immense hardship. This government has no plan to increase jobs and no plan to help these youth get a job—just a plan to punish them and undermine any confidence that they may have had.

Labor is committed to ensuring young people find work through support, through training, through work experience and through incentives. Labor wants our youth, who are our future, to succeed. But we also understand that this is difficult in the current job climate and that youth need our support and understanding, Not misplaced value judgments and punishment that have rolled straight out of the right-wing radio shock jocks.

Labor will support education and training for youth. I visited a youth training centre in my electorate of Moreton recently. The Phoenix Development Group at Rocklea offers traineeships in warehousing in a fully functional warehouse with on-site classrooms. The students there obtain a certificate III on completion of the traineeship. The Phoenix Development Group brokers pathways to success for Indigenous Australians and other minority groups, as well as youth disengaging from schooling and the long-term unemployed. They also have a special focus on people that have disabilities. They have training facilities particularly for people that are visually impaired. The Phoenix Development Group's goal is that their students, on completion of their courses, will be empowered individuals and able to live independent of the welfare system. The students I met there a week or so ago were keen to get out into the employment system, meet employers and become independent. That is the recipe for youth success: training, education and support, not the humiliation and punishment that the Abbott government is imposing through this bill.

I should stress, however, that there is one measure in this bill that Labor will not oppose: we will not oppose the ceasing of the low-income supplement. Labor will always be fiscally responsible where measures are fair and socially just. So far Labor has announced support for more than $2 billion in budget savings. The Labor Party calls on the government to split this bill. if the government does not split this bill then Labor will oppose this bill in its entirety.

These measures will not assist youth to get jobs. They may, in fact, prevent them from gaining work. This legislation is unfair and it is cruel. It will not decrease the levels of welfare dependency. Instead it will force our youth into poverty. Labor will stand up for youth and oppose these unfair measures.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After the budget last year, I went round my electorate and spent a number of weekends conducting doorknocking. I love doorknocking. I conduct community forums and mobile offices. I am now conducting coffee catch-ups, which are hugely popular. There is nothing like doorknocking to get a raw, unedited view of the issues and concerns of your electorate. Last year straight after the budget, I spent a number of weekends doorknocking right across the electorate. The response was quite frightening actually when people opened their doors and I asked them whether they had any issues or concerns they wanted to let me know about. They spent a lot of time and a lot of energy, and quite often there were tears, letting me know what they were concerned about. They were frightened and they were angry.

The budget last year painted what was supposedly a budget emergency where the disadvantaged, low- and middle-income earners, the disabled and those living on pensions were targeted to address the supposed budget emergency. It is quite interesting that the budget emergency seems to have gone this year but the unfairness of last year's budget remains.

As I said, the beauty of doorknocking is that it gives you a raw and unedited view of the issues and concerns of your electorate. And the raw and unedited view was that they are angry and frightened. They were angry about the cuts to the pensions. They were angry about cuts to the DSP. They were angry about the cuts to education. They were angry about the endless broken promises. They felt incredibly betrayed by the Abbott government because the government had said that there would be no changes to pensions, no cuts to education, no cuts to health. Yet, low and behold, what did we get through the budget emergency of last year? We got cuts to pensions, cuts to the disability support pension, cuts to education, cuts to health and broken promise after broken promise. A lot of Canberrans felt incredibly betrayed.

As I said, they were angry but they were also frightened. I remember taking a phone call from my mum shortly after the budget who had just been down to the supermarket. She had run into an old friend of hers who was in tears because she had got the message through last year's dreadfully unfair budget that she was going to have to work until she was 70. She was in the process of sorting out her retirement and was looking forward to retirement. She was very frightened about the fact that she would have to work until she was 70.

In those conversations I had with the people of Canberra—in Tuggeranong, in Weston Creek, in Woden and in the inner south—they were very concerned about cuts to pensions and about the cuts to health and education. I remember doorknocking one woman. She was a little surprised to see me there. Afterwards she came running down the street after us because we had moved up a number of doors. She was in tears and said to me: 'I'm really concerned about how this unfair budget is going to affect my child's education. I'm doing it tough. I'm doing it on my own and I don't think I'll be able to afford for my child to be tertiary educated, despite the fact that I'm working very hard. I'm doing it on my own. I'm a single mum.' She was not prepared to say that to me as I stood at her front door, but she came running down the street after she had a chance to collect her thoughts and express those views, as I said, in tears.

As I said, a number of things came up in those discussions but the surprise for me and where the most anger was felt was in the cuts to youth allowance. Canberrans were shocked that a government could do that to its young people, that it could propose such a punitive measure on its young people; it is young people who are doing it tough. They said to me: 'This could happen to my kid. This could happen to my grandchild. This could happen to the young person up the street. This could happen to my neighbour's young son or your daughter. This could happen to any of us. How could a government do this to its own people?'

We are a nation that prides itself on social democracy, that prides itself on establishing policies, principles and ideologies framed around the enlightenment. We are a nation that was at the vanguard of the social democratic movement throughout the world. Yet we are making cuts to these young people, just casting them aside, cutting them adrift really. They felt angry and they felt betrayed. As one constituent said to me at a mobile office just last weekend: 'How are these people meant to live? What are they meant to live on? Are they meant to live on air?

So I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015 and join my Labor colleagues in standing against this terrible legislation, this terrible policy. I am doing so to protect young people across Australia and in my electorate of Canberra. Since this government came to office, we have seen an unprecedented attack on young people. This legislation continues those attacks and that is why Labor strongly oppose it.

This legislation will leave job seekers under 25 with nothing to live on for one month. This measure revises last year's horrendous budget measure that required young people under 30 to actively seek work for six months prior to receiving income support payments. But whether for one month or six, Labor will never support measures that leave young people with nothing to live off. As this woman said to me at my mobile office at Weston Creek just recently, 'What do you expect them live off? Air?'

This bill also sees the government press ahead with its changes to the eligibility age for Newstart, pushing job seekers between the ages of 22 and 24 onto the lower youth allowance. This legislation is fundamentally unfair and these cruel cuts will impact those Australians, those Canberrans, who are most vulnerable who were targeted in last year's budget. It will hurt those we should be doing everything we can to help. This legislation will see 54,000 young job seekers under 25 forced to live on absolutely nothing for one month. How does the government expect these young people to get by? Where does the government expect them to live? Who will pay for their groceries? Who is going to pay for their bills?

As we know, one month is a very long time with no form of income. The assumption is that these young people will be able to fall on their family and friends for a one-month period; but what about the most vulnerable in our society, who do not have the option of moving back in with mum or dad or whose parents simply cannot afford to support them?

This move in particular has received outright opposition from the Australian and Canberra public—rightly so. People were absolutely horrified by the government's plan to leave young people with nothing to live off for six months and they are still horrified by the one-month period. The chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, Dr Cassandra Goldie, says that making young people wait for six months or one month will only cause hardship and homelessness. It risks consigning young people to a vicious cycle of poverty. It must not become law.

This legislation will also push young people under 25 from Newstart onto the lower youth allowance. This is a cut of at least $48 a week or almost $2,500 a year.    For those people shifted from Newstart to youth allowance, this represents an almost 20 per cent cut in support.    The Australian Council of Social Service reports that Newstart payments are 35 per cent below the poverty line of $400 per week for a single adult. These young people are already just getting by—many are not getting by—and these cuts will push young people into a cycle of poverty. Now is not the time for the government to turn its back on young Australians, when youth unemployment has soared to 13.5 per cent.

What those opposite fail to understand is that unemployment can happen to anyone. That was the point that those Canberrans made to me when I was doorknocking last year, straight after the budget. It can happen to anyone. As they said to me, 'Gai, there but for the grace of God goes my neighbour's young son, my girlfriend's young daughter, my granddaughter, my grandson, my son or my daughter.' This is what this legislation completely overlooks. It can happen to anyone. In a social-democratic nation and in the nation that has mechanisms in place—or it did it in the past—of looking after those who are doing it tough, it is particularly outrageous. As one Canberran said to me last year, 'The budget measures that the government introduced last year in response to the supposed budget emergency cut into our social fabric.' I agree entirely

At a time when youth unemployment is around double the national average and at a 10-year high, we should be supporting our youth, not abandoning them in their time of need. The CEO of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Kate Carnell, has said that:

… unless the youth unemployment issue is addressed - and it will need to be addressed quite aggressively - that we will end up with a generation of young people on the fringes of the economy.

She is not the only one voicing concerns about this policy. John Falzon, one of my constituents and the CEO of the St Vincent de Paul Society, said:

This change is a clear admission of the cruelty of this measure without actually abandoning it.

The National Welfare Rights Network said the one-month wait period:

… will place young people in severe financial hardship, leaving them without food, medicines, money for job search and rent. No income means no income – whether it’s for six months or four weeks. There is no place in our social security system for such a harmful approach. The Parliament should reject this plan outright.

Just this morning, I saw the reports and heard on the radio about a study has just been launched again by the Australian Council of Social Service, which found that inequality between the richest and poorest in Australia has grown. Instead of taking steps to address Australia's growing inequality, the Abbott government is almost doing the exact opposite by continuing its savage attack on low- and middle-income Australians. It is continuing its savage attack on the disadvantaged, it is continuing its savage attack on the disabled and it is continuing its savage attack on those on fixed incomes, such as pensioners. It is bad policies like this one that entrench disadvantage. They entrench disadvantage by cutting people adrift and sending them into a cycle of poverty. This will lead to greater inequality in this country.

Australians do not want to live in a country that abandons young people who have fallen on hard times. That is the very, very strong message I got from the people of Canberra last year particularly, as I knocked on those doors. I got that raw, unedited communication from them and that raw, unedited message from them. They spoke about what this government had planned in so many areas in terms of its cuts to pensions, its cuts to education, its cuts to health, its cuts the ABC, its cuts to SBS and its cut to youth programs like Youth Connections. Youth Connections was doing a fantastic job in terms of linking up youth at risk it with programs and keeping them in the education systems. Cuts to programs like that are just incomprehensible. It is a program that is helping out young, at-risk kids in terms of keeping them in the education system and then essentially giving them a path to a career and being a productive member of the community. This government gets rid of programs like that. It just beggars belief as to what the thinking was behind that.

Labor will oppose the measure to push young people under 25 from Newstart onto the lower youth allowance, as we have done for the last year. Why are we doing it? Because the measure is wrong. We will oppose the pauses to the indexation changes of income-free areas, because these changes too will hurt the most vulnerable people on income support payments and over time these changes will only hurt these vulnerable people more. We will also oppose the measures in the bill that apply a one-week waiting period to all working age payments. This is nothing but a shameful cut by the government that will leave people on income support with nothing for a week.

We will, however, support the ceasing of the low-income supplement in this bill. My colleague has just mentioned that. We call on the government to split the bill when it gets to the Senate, separating out the low-income supplement measure so that this can be agreed on. If the government is not willing to split the bill, Labor will oppose it in its entirety. The Abbott government, despite all its rhetoric about 'earn or learn' is essentially giving up on these young people. This measure has been rejected by this parliament once already and it should be rejected again.

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to discuss the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015. This legislation proposes a month-long waiting period for job seekers under the age of 25 to access income support. This is in addition to a one-week waiting period for all working-age payments, excluding the widow allowance. This legislation proposes changes to the amount that people on income support and student payments can earn before their rates are reduced. This legislation revives the plan to increase the age at which Newstart is payable to young people from 22 to 24 years. And it proposes the cessation of the low-income supplement, an annual compensation payment for low-income earners that was part of the carbon price policy. This is despite the Prime Minister's repeated promises before the election to keep the compensation without the carbon tax. With the exception of the removal of the low-income supplement, Labor opposes these measures. We have already fought many of these measures once and we will do so again.

The budget describes the rationale for one-month waiting period as being to:

… set the clear expectation that young people must make every effort to maximise their chances of successfully obtaining work.

But there are a range of reasons why young people are losing their jobs or are unable to work more hours or simply cannot find more work. Current economic conditions have created significant barriers for young people to find work, particularly in regional areas like that which I represent. In some parts of the Hunter region, youth unemployment is a staggeringly high 18.6 per cent. Declining employment in mining and manufacturing is of course having an impact, as is the reduced availability of lower skilled jobs on the market. The decline in apprenticeships has further restricted meaningful work opportunities for young people. However, young people are actively working, job seeking or getting job ready. Recent labour force data showed more people under the age of 19 years were either in the labour force or in education than ever before. So, despite weak employment growth, participation is increasing and young people are already 'earning or learning'.

Making ends meet on welfare payments is not easy. We on this side know that, given a chance, most people would choose the satisfaction and remuneration that comes from having a job over the alternative. This is not limited to young people. We also know that not every young person wants, or has the opportunity, to go to university. High-school completion rates in my region are below the state average, and over a quarter of the residents of Charlton have a TAFE qualification. Young people who want to work should be supported, not punished. Likewise, those who want to study or learn a trade should have the opportunity to do so without being penalised if they work at the same time. This legislation will impact on those young people who choose to follow either of these paths.

Forcing young people to endure a month without any income is a sinister idea. Without doubt, it will cause financial, physical and emotional hardship. As Gerard Thomas, from Welfare Rights, put it:

Many people wouldn't be able to survive four weeks without a pay cheque. Why is it any different for young people?

It is a sad indictment of this government that this policy could be considered better than their first attempt, which sought to impose a six-month waiting period for job seekers under 30 years of age and then provide income support for only half of every year. If this current idea is sinister, then that was diabolical. Neither is demonstrative of good government.

What does a month without income mean for young people? It could see the depletion of modest savings or it could mean going into debt or high-risk financial situations in order to make ends meet. For many, it will mean that mum and dad or others are left to help with living expenses, which for many low-income families will be an incredible burden. For many, it will mean losing a house or a rental property that has been exceptionally difficult to secure in the first place. At worst, though, it will be total desertion, leaving some young people with nowhere to live and no ability to provide for essentials. The underlying principle of this bill and the previous budget proposal is that every young person who is out of work has a family to fall back on and those families have resources to support these young people. I would submit that there are many young people without a family to rely on and there are even more young people who do have a family but a family whose resources are already stretched close enough to breaking point. This bill neither understands nor reflects that societal reality. That is a massive problem with this bill, and that is why the bill should be opposed. Add to the mix the fear and frustration of job seeking and the demoralisation that occurs if you are being knocked back time and again. Add to it the stigmatisation of being unemployed. Securing housing, loans and any future line of credit will be more difficult as a result. You will be labelled a 'leaner' by this government that lacks a social conscience and cannot understand that, when we lift the lot of those most vulnerable, we all benefit.

I have spoken about this policy with charities and community groups in my electorate. They tell me there is absolutely no doubt it will drive young people into severe financial hardship and place further pressure on the not-for-profit sector. I have spoken with constituents who call my office or send me emails. They tell me it is not fair or dignified to expect the families and friends of young people to cover their cost of living whilst they are without income for a month and that it could even lead to more welfare dependency, not less. They fear that, at worst, crime rates will go up. This is a measure condemned by the Australian Council of Social Service, the National Welfare Rights Network, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Mission Australia and a range of other community sector groups.

The previous legislation I referred to was rejected by those in the other place and was described by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights as 'incompatible with the right to social security and the right to an adequate standard of living'. And yet still the government is persisting with this new incarnation. A one-month waiting period will still hurt young people when they can least cope with it; it will still engender poverty and vulnerability in the least resilient families; and it is still part of the profoundly ideological agenda of this government. We can only conclude that this kind of aversion to the social safety net is an idea so deeply ingrained in the ethos of the modern Liberal Party that they are either blinded to the harm they will do by denying it to young job seekers or they have absolute disregard for the ramifications if they do.

I acknowledge that this is not a debate about the adequacy of income support levels, but it is worthwhile to note that, three days before this year's budget was delivered, the Councils of Social Service Network released a report on social security payments which showed that almost all recipients of Newstart payments or youth allowance do not consider the payment rate sufficient to meet cost-of-living expenses. More than a third of survey participants were forced to skip dental and medical appointments or forgo treatments because they could not afford to pay for them. Nearly one in five reported missing meals in an effort to make ends meet.

I would hope that both sides of the House agree that the safety net is precisely that—a safety net. It is a means to ensure no-one has to live in poverty. It is the basic right of every Australian. But it is also an investment in the future. It means we support access to education, health care and housing—the necessities which everybody needs to have the chance of generating an income and participating in society. Young people are the next generation of workers, thinkers, leaders. But should this bill become law it will change the way we support young people at a critical time, when they are moving from study to the workforce, when theirs is the first job to go in tough economic conditions, or when their skills and experience do not match the needs of the employment market. We would be deserting them and destroying the safety net we are so rightly proud of.

This bill includes an allocation of around $8.1 million in emergency relief payments, an acknowledgement that people will be forced to seek assistance to make ends meet. So the government cannot argue that these measures will not place young people in financial hardship, because the proof is already in the bill and the government is already anticipating the impact of this bill's measures. What does this say about this Liberal government? As legislators, should it not be incumbent on us to avoid taking action that will knowingly push people into poverty? I have spent time with emergency relief providers in my electorate, some of which receive funding from the federal government. Emergency relief payment provision for the Samaritans in Toronto and Teralba and the Salvation Army in Bonnells Bay, for example, are all supported by the government. There are many more services in my area run by church based charities and community centres who do not receive federal government funding and who rely on donations from the community to keep going. They are all telling me that demand is increasing and that they are already under pressure. I know that should this bill be successful their ability to meet the needs of the community will be stretched, and I fear it will be to breaking point.

Following the devastating storms in April, many people experienced damage to their properties, loss of electricity and water and, for some, loss of income. For so many people, this was a catalyst for financial hardship. Pensioners, families and low-income earners, for example, who under ordinary circumstances manage to make ends meet, were caught out by the unexpected costs that came along with this event. For some it was losing all the food in their fridges and freezers during the power outage; for others, it was the cost of fuel to run the generator for a few days. Even the simple fact that children could not attend school for days or weeks added to some family budgets. It became evident to me very quickly that emergency relief services were experiencing increased demand for food packages and utilities support in the aftermath of the storm.

These charities do not turn people away. They do whatever it takes to help. Their role in supporting the vulnerable in the community cannot be underestimated. My Hunter Labor colleagues and I made an appeal to the Minister for Social Services for urgent, one-off funding to support the work of these ER providers in the Hunter region. It is with pleasure that I inform the House that the minister's office has informed me that top-up funding of some $62,000 is to be delivered to some existing emergency relief providers. I take this opportunity to thank the minister and his staff for their time and effort in responding to this request. I know this will be welcome news for some of the emergency relief providers in the Hunter region.

I would also like to point to this as an example of the government and the Hunter local members working together towards a shared goal of supporting our communities, as we should be. This place is often a chamber of hyper-bipartisanship, but this was a great example of both sides of politics putting politics aside and uniting for the common good. I would note that the reason we requested this emergency relief funding was the tightened eligibility criteria for this disaster. Prior to the 2013 Blue Mountains bushfires, disaster relief payments were provided to people in affected communities when they had a power outage for over 48 hours. Unfortunately, since then, this eligibility has been restricted quite significantly to require 25 per cent damage to a house in addition to the power outage. This meant that hundreds, if not thousands, of families in my area who would have received disaster relief payments were excluded. This is a massive dent in the budgets of many families in my area—a massive dent that could have been avoided by retaining the previous disaster relief payment guidelines. Nevertheless, I do thank the Minister for Social Services for freeing up $62,000 of additional funding to my emergency relief providers. It is important, and I do appreciate the gesture. It will help many families in my area and many charities and community groups to get back on their feet after this very significant natural disaster.

The government recently released details of the number of claims made, including details of around 450 claims from the 15 local government areas covered by the program, which were flagged for further examination amid allegations of fraud. I condemn fraud in the strongest possible terms, and of course I am perplexed by this narrative. When I met with Centrelink representatives shortly after the payments were announced, one of the first questions I asked was about the self-assessment method and whether there was a risk of exploitation. I was assured, quite rightly, that there should be no barriers between those affected by natural disasters and the government's ability to support them in a timely way. Logic tells you it is not feasible to withhold a payment of this kind until an assessor has verified every claim. There are physical, geographical, efficiency and compassionate reasons this system is in place, and I accept that. But I find it odd that the government, in particular the member for Paterson, who made several comments to local media, did not mention or defend this process at all.

Again, I cannot stress more firmly that fraudulent behaviour is not to be tolerated, but at a time that called for a compassionate and supportive response, when the limits of almost all Hunter residents had been tested, we got more of the 'rorters and fraudsters' and 'lifters and leaners' rhetoric from this government. And that is very disappointing. It points to the deeper symbolism in this bill, because this bill is symptomatic of a government obsessed with dividing Australia. Whether it is changes to the pension assets test, whether it is the debate around citizenship or whether it is the debate around reforms to the Racial Discrimination Act, this government is intent on dividing the country. They make narrow political assessments that by attacking certain minorities they can cobble together a majority of people to re-elect them at the next federal election. They may be right. I hope they are not. I am proud that Labor is fighting against this divisive approach to politics. Even if they are right, we are a poorer country for such an approach. We are a meaner country for such an approach and ultimately history will judge the Prime Minister, those in his cabinet and those in his government very poorly for taking such an approach.

We saw that in the last few years, when there was cause to reassess the legacy of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom—another example of someone who divided society in order to rule it. In the end, history was not kind to that period of UK history. I urge a note of caution. I urge people to think very carefully before they demonise job seekers, part pensioners, ethnic minorities and other minorities in this country who have no guilt in these matters and who are merely trying to survive in this country and merely trying to advance their families. I urge everyone in this place to take a step back, to take a deep breath and to think very carefully about the demonisation that is symbolised in bills such as this one.

Debate adjourned.