Harry Quick (Franklin, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise in this place to highlight something that I am sure is an issue in each and every one of the 149 seats in the Australian federal parliament. Today, during question time, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations waxed lyrical about the fact that the number of long-term unemployed is falling. I agree that it is great news: getting more and more people into the workforce is a great news story. The unemployment rate is now below five per cent, and it has been at that level for the last several months.

It is a great news story, and I congratulate the government. But people should realise—and I know that everyone in this place realises it—that this does not give the full picture. I represent a seat in Tasmania that covers rural and regional areas, and the options for people who live in these small country towns are severely curtailed when it comes to seeking work. Transport is very poor and job opportunities are scarcer in these areas than they are in the major population centres. In Tasmania, where we probably have one of the highest unemployment rates in all of Australia, the rate is a heck of a lot lower than it was when I first came to this parliament in 1993.

But the fact is that there are stacks and stacks of people of working age who are not participating in the labour market. These people want to work. According to the ABS figures, there are over one million of these people—one million people of working age who are not participating in the labour market, and they want to work. These people, unfortunately, are not eligible for job seeker allowance and not eligible for any sort of training or placement assistance, and I find that an absolute shame. Employers also are not able to take these people on under employment subsidy as, once again, they do not qualify for the retraining assistance.

So here we have a million people in Australia who want to work and who are of working age, and, because they do not meet the criteria, the Job Network are not interested because they cannot make a buck out of them. The employer would love to take them on, but he or she is not going to get that financial assistance from the government. It is sad to say that there are some employers whose hearts are not in the right place and who want to make a quick quid out of the fact that people are there, available, and want to work. So, effectively, these people are marginalised from participating, from actively looking for work.

I know quite a few of these people. Sadly, in my electorate I have large swathes of public housing where there are no jobs, where people are marginalised—so much so that they have to put in their CV from a letterbox in another suburb because, if they put a certain postcode on their application, on their resume, people will not give them a second chance. That is absolutely appalling—having to hire a private postbox across the river in another suburb, basically telling a lie that they are living in another suburb, just so that their resume gets past first base.

As I said, these one million people come from all age groups, not necessarily from broadacre public housing. They come from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. The sad fact is that many of these people are aged between 40 and 65. I had my 65th birthday in June this year, and next year I will be unemployed. I am taking the option to retire and do something else with my life.

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