Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Day for his question. I congratulate him on his first question and also I thank him for providing me with notice of the question. It was a bit of a bonus receiving a suggested answer as well! I say to Senator Day that it comes as no surprise that you should ask a question about this topic, given your life-long commitment to creating jobs and your concern for the young of Australia, especially of your home state of South Australia. As to your list of 12 activities, I think I could tick off about nine of them. I will let you guess which three I am not able to tick off.

In direct response to the honourable senator's question, this government is concerned about creating the environment where there can be jobs the young people. So the overarching effort of the government is to create the environment the job creation. The reason for that is that a life on welfare does nobody any favours, especially those who are the recipients of the welfare. That is why the government has adopted recommendations from the former Labor government's review of the fair work laws to clarify the intention of individual flexibility arrangements, to provide more flexibility to workers, to approach their employer and, just so those opposite understand, in Labor's own explanatory memorandum these arrangements were in order to meet the genuine needs of the employee and employer. We did say at the last election that we would not take our policies further than the 38-page policy document and, therefore, we do not too intend to go as far down the track as the senator has suggested. (Time expired)