Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

Youth unemployment is still too high at 9.7 per cent, but it is certainly lower than the 15.2 per cent when Labor was last in government. However, teenage wages have risen by 6½ per cent in real terms, whereas under 13 years of Labor they fell backwards 5.1 per cent. What we have to do is to try and encourage young people into jobs. So I was quite alarmed when I saw a notice go out at a Kiama public school for a meeting with ‘John Robinson’ of Unions New South Wales—they misspelt John Robertson. He was going to conduct a lesson for students on how to get a job. I thought to myself, ‘This would be interesting.’ It turns out that Mr Robertson’s lesson delivered was about anti federal government legislation and was anti-Work Choices. He was encouraging students not to get a job but to vote Labor—in a New South Wales public school.

Despite the furore—I read the Illawarra Mercury for this—at least one other Illawarra school, Keira High School, is likely to hold a similar meeting, the principal said. The principal, who happens to be the vice-president of the New South Wales Teachers Federation, said ‘it would benefit pupils who have entered or were about to enter the workforce’. So I asked myself: what is it that the New South Wales Teachers Federation are doing to encourage young people to get jobs? I came across a CD-ROM put out by the New South Wales Teachers Federation. The CD-ROM shows teachers how to spread the union’s anti-Work Choices campaign using every subject in the HSC syllabus, from drama and physical education to food technology. This CD-ROM, issued by the Teachers Federation to careers advisers in the schools—rather than teaching the careers advisers how to teach young people how to get a job—is trying to turn every student into a victim, trying to generate a culture of—

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