Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

What a surprise to come back on the first day of parliament to see that One Nation have sold out again and are backing a piece of government legislation! But I rise to speak in opposition to the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Youth Jobs Path: Prepare, Trial, Hire) Bill 2016. I want to say at the outset that I believe that this legislation to establish the Youth Jobs PaTH program is poorly constructed and will put young Australian jobseekers at risk of exploitation.

Youth unemployment is a huge problem. In my home state of Tasmania we have amongst the highest rates of youth unemployment in the country. In some parts of Tasmania the unemployment rate amongst 15- to 24-year-olds is as high as 27 per cent. Twenty-seven per cent of our young people are unemployed. We have a youth unemployment crisis, and we should be striving to do anything that we can to give young people opportunities to find work. Unfortunately, the government's PaTH program that we are debating here today will only serve to fail our young people. The government's PaTH program will put young jobseekers at risk and is fundamentally flawed in its approach to addressing youth unemployment.

Our nation is desperate for solutions to unemployment. I talk all the time to young Tasmanians who are worried about their future. This bill does nothing to alleviate their concerns. It does absolutely nothing to create any sustainable solutions to the huge problem we have with unemployment amongst young Australians. What we have before us is a really poor attempt at resolving the issue of youth unemployment. It will not create additional jobs for young Australians and it does not provide a path to good, well-paying, secure jobs. We need programs that genuinely help our young people to find work. We should be investing in early childhood education, university, TAFE and genuine experiences that come from traineeships and apprenticeships. But this legislation that is before us does not provide sufficient safeguards for young people, who are amongst the most vulnerable workers in today's labour market. This is lazy policy from the government. We need a solution that goes beyond the Liberals' mantra of 'jobs and growth'.

I will briefly outline the intention of this bill. This bill is designed in part to support the introduction of the Turnbull government's Prepare-Trial-Hire Program, otherwise known as PaTH. Jobseekers in this program will be placed in an internship for between four and six weeks, where they will work between 15 and 25 hours a week and will receive payments of $200 per fortnight on top of their current income support payment. If you do the maths, this means that an intern who works 25 hours per week but receives only their Newstart payment plus an extra payment of $200 will earn just $14.50 an hour. That is $3.20 less than the minimum wage. This means that young people participating in this program will be paid less than the minimum wage.

In addition to this, businesses will be paid $1,000 to take on an intern and then receive a wage subsidy of between $6,500 and $10,000 if they hire them at the conclusion of their internship. But there is nothing in the legislation to stop employers from using this program's free labour instead of their existing workforce, and there is nothing in this legislation to stop employers from churning through interns to receive the $1,000 government payment.

The bill will also amend the Social Security Act to allow young people to suspend their payments if they are employed. They can then restart them without reapplying if they lose their job through no fault of their own within 26 weeks.

The government claims that the measures in this bill are non-controversial, but the reality is that this legislation has been rushed and would exploit young jobseekers and undermine workforce standards. This bill is simply a way of exploiting young Australians. We on this side have serious concerns about whether this program represents a fair deal for Australia's young unemployed. We are concerned that this will be simply another failed coalition policy, like the Work for the Dole program, where they push young unemployed people into programs that do nothing to assist them in real, meaningful employment.

The sad truth is that Australia's youth are counting the cost of the Turnbull government's failure to develop a real jobs plan for the nation. Instead of fighting for what matters to young Australians, like fair pay, jobs and education, they have spent the majority of their term fighting themselves. Their bickering and infighting is a constant reminder of their inability to provide stable, united leadership for the people of Australia. They are so busy fighting themselves that they have achieved absolutely nothing. They are hopelessly failing our youth and they have achieved nothing—nothing to allay the fears of long-term unemployment for our young Australians. This government promised to fix the budget and to create jobs and growth, but it has done nothing and left young Australians high and dry.

We know now that the Prime Minister is bereft of ideas when it comes to jobs or the economy, and the words 'jobs and growth' have no meaning for those on the opposite side. Here we are on budget day, and the Turnbull government's big and only pitch remains a $50 billion tax cut for the big end of town, for big business. The Turnbull government's shonky record on youth unemployment gives us every reason to fear the exploitation of our young people through this legislation. Despite promising jobs and growth, the coalition has failed to deliver. Unemployment currently sits at 5.9 per cent, which is the highest it has been for more than 12 months. The rate of unemployment in Australia today is higher than in the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

The Liberals have also failed on their promise to tackle youth unemployment. Youth unemployment has climbed to 13.3 per cent. We have more than 300,000 unemployed young people between the ages of 15 and 24—including 4,500 young Tasmanians—as of March. As I said before, the unemployment rate amongst our young people in Tasmania is just too high.

Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high, particularly in rural and remote parts of Australia, like my home state of Tasmania, where, as I said, we have over 4,500 young people who are unemployed. These high rates of youth unemployment put the future of our young people and our economy at risk. But, instead of tackling the real issue of youth unemployment, the government has come up with a hastily cobbled together scheme that offers no solutions to the problem. This government is so out of touch that it wants to put vulnerable young Australians in a situation where they could be, and many of them most likely will be, exploited.

We should be creating pathways to good, well-paid and secure jobs for young jobseekers by investing in early childhood education, as I said before; in university; and in TAFE. These are all things this government has attacked since we were last here in this place. The Liberal government just does not get it. They just do not get it. They are so out of touch and so far removed from everyday Australians.

A good example of this was the Liberal state government's decision to axe pathway planners from Tasmanian state schools in 2014. There are already so few resources in our schools, and then they decide to take away pathway planners, who help our kids map out their futures. This is further evidence that the Liberals just do not get the issue. They are out of touch and they have no real policy direction.

I tell you that our children deserve better from the Liberal government than unrelenting cuts to education. We need programs that genuinely help our young people find work. You would think that the government would have tried to get this legislation right. But we know that, while they talk the talk about jobs, their record on creating jobs is dismal. If this legislation were passed in its present form, it would see a flawed program come into effect. Labor want to do everything that we can to improve the job skills of young people, but this program falls short and does not deliver. Labor have also said on many occasions that we would be happy to work with the government on a whole raft of issues, none more important than creating opportunities and a bright future for young Australians.

Labor also has a number of other concerns about this legislation. There is very little detail available about how the PaTH program will actually operate in practice. The government have given no specifics about how young jobseekers will acquire the skills they need for the jobs of the future. They have not been able to explain what jobseekers will do while doing the internship phase of the program. They cannot even tell us what their definition of an 'intern' is. There is also no detail on how this program will lead, or could lead, to full-time work. Now, they are pretty important fundamentals; they really are.

This lacklustre bill also raises some serious concerns about inadequate protection against exploitation. I have a couple of questions. What safeguards are in place to ensure that the PaTH program is not used to replace existing jobs with cheaper labour? What safeguards are in place to prevent young Australians from being forced into working for below the minimum wage? What safeguards are in place to make sure that employers are not making interns work outside standard hours without paying penalty rates? We already know what those on the other side think of penalty rates: they are not supportive of anyone receiving penalty rates. What protection is in place to prevent interns from being unfairly dismissed? We do not know the answers to these questions because the government has not given us any reassurances or any idea about how this program will actually be implemented.

The government have the power to fix the issues I have raised, but they have refused to do so. They have obviously come to the table with One Nation and got their support, but they have not addressed these fundamentally critically important issues that I have asked questions about. They have neglected to fix these issues because they are a government that are constantly trying to undercut rights and conditions for workers—it is in their DNA—through their attacks on penalty rates, their anti-union ABCC agenda and their unfair Public Service bargaining framework. It is in their DNA. It is what they believe in.

We on this side believe in protecting workers. We certainly believe in ensuring that young Australians have the best opportunities to have ongoing full employment and good prospects for the future. But the government are hell-bent on undermining a fair go. They have gone after the penalty rates of over 40,000 Tasmanians, many of whom are students. They have cut from TAFEs, apprenticeships, early education, schools and higher education. Now they want to put in place this poor substitute for proper training.

Like with most things, this government just does not get it. This place has proven time and again that it does not support this policy, and yet the government still will not drop it. Maybe they feel like they have a chance now with One Nation, which is always siding with the government.

In conclusion, in its current form this bill is very poorly constructed. There are so many holes in the program that we really cannot take seriously that this government will know how to fix the problems. We have already highlighted many of them. There were the questions I asked this morning. They have not been answered. We have tried negotiating with the government to fix these flaws, as I said earlier. We have tried on numerous occasions. But they will not listen.

It is clear we have a youth unemployment crisis in Australia. Our young jobseekers need real support and real solutions. Job opportunities for young people should not be created through a system that exposes young workers to exploitation, unfair conditions and unfair wages. We would be failing young jobseekers if we were to wave this legislation through the Senate without demanding a better deal for them. Our young people deserve real support to find and keep a good job, not exploitative programs that lead them on a path to nowhere.

The government's PaTH plan is a bandaid designed to cover up their poor record in generating jobs and fixing unemployment. This is the government's latest attempt to undermine workers' potential. Our young people deserve better, and Labor remains opposed to this bill as it stands.