Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am feeling a bit of angst at the moment because I am supposed to be in the House speaking on some other legislation. This is a very important report and I was really proud to be a part of it. It is just by coincidence that I too would like to congratulate the chair of the committee, the member for Cunningham, Sharon Bird, who is currently in the chamber. I also have my colleague the member for Makin, my friend Tony Zappia, and the secretary of the inquiry, Dr Worthington, in the chamber. That is terrific and I do thank them all very much for participating. I also thank the member for Gippslan for his contribution and support for the report and also for his interest in youth affairs. I know, like many in this place, he is very active about trying to do the right thing by his constituents and certainly by rural and regional Australia, so I congratulate him on that.

The name of the report is Adolescent Overload. It is a report of the inquiry into combining school and work, and into supporting successful youth transitions. That is exactly what it is. Mr Deputy Speaker, you and I have been on committees together for some time and I have prided myself on coming up with titles for committees. The member for Mallee is in the House at the moment and no doubt we will be discussing the name of our next report as well. But I was hoping this one would be called ‘The New Working Class’ or ‘The Working Class’, but I was outvoted. However, that is what the report is essentially about: students working and the important transition from the world of school to the world of work, as well as how we can go about supporting them. I think ‘delicate balance’ is the term we use for it. Chapter 3 is headed ‘School and work: a delicate balance’. Stephanie, a student from New South Wales, summed it up really well. On page 21 of the report she is quoted as saying:

It is very important to me to have a job—it means I am earning money—yet the HSC is also vital. Finding the balance is so important. I don’t think many people know how to do this.

That is really at the heart of our interest in this phenomenon—I think Australia heads the list worldwide in terms of students who are at school, particularly middle school and a little higher, and also doing part-time work—and it is a phenomenon that the member for Cunningham alluded to earlier. Maybe investigating some of the sociological reasons in comparative terms would have been really interesting, too. Anyway, many, many young people do combine work and school. I think the figure quoted in the report is something like 260,000 young people doing this, so it is really important that we have a look at the nature and extent of it and how we might be able to assist.

I think my colleagues would agree that, apart from the terrific aspect of getting around and meeting young people, and having many of them make submissions to the inquiry, the experience for most people was really positive. Some of them spoke with genuine enthusiasm and pride in what they did. What really struck me was when we were comparing our youth—and mine goes much further back than the very honourable member for Cunningham’s. I worked in a milk bar until they worked out that, apart from my arithmetic, I was not going that well. I was all thumbs and fingers on the cash register, so they moved me to the milk, but then I discovered the cigarette stand and started smoking, so I did not work there for long. However, the idea is that it was a rarity to have to go to work then—I certainly did not have to—and it was a very strange world to have young people where the adults were. However, that is not the case today; young people, as we learnt through this inquiry, are doing a full range of work with high levels of responsibility. I think that is where a lot of the pressure points are that a number of these students commented on.

Many students want to work for a whole variety of reasons, and I will outline some of the positive aspects listed in the report. One reason is to enhance a student’s confidence and self esteem, and it certainly seemed to do that for a lot of students that we met. Another is to contribute to their financial wellbeing. That included those who have to work to support their families and there were some pretty sad cases there. You could be looking at the body of a young person but into the eyes of someone who had already had a life experience supporting a family while struggling with school; it was quite moving in some instances.

For others of course it was to get some financial independence from their parents. Many said that they did not want to have to rely on their parents. It is funny, isn’t it, that as they strive for financial independence the parliament over a number of years has increased the age of dependence to 25—and now we are negotiating about bringing it down again. But the reality is that young people seem to be becoming more independent a lot earlier in life but we have put the age of independence out further and further. That seems to be an incongruity between reality and what we are demanding of young people for financial reasons. Perhaps it is saving the budget bottom line, but I do not know how it is assisting people to meet the material needs that they deem necessary in their lives.

Regarding facilitating the development of social networks, the member for Cunningham gave some really good examples of how young people’s world has been expanded. When we were at school we had our school friends but young people now have another world out there—I do not mean just the nightclubs—where they work and take up responsible positions.

I sometimes think—and it certainly came through from some of the discussions we had—that a lot of schools are not even aware of the incredible skill sets that a number of young people have because of their widening social network. What they can do often is not recognised. It is not on their reports and it does not seem to be recognised when references are written. It is as if the worlds of school and work are so totally separate that you cannot connect them. I think this report makes it very clear that we are dealing with a phenomenon where they are intersecting all the time.

The report says students will be allowed to gain useful knowledge and independence and exercise greater responsibility and self-reliance. Well, everybody in this chamber would acknowledge those very important life skills. Certainly the world of work allows them to do that.

Regarding the idea of instilling a work ethic and attitude, I hope there is work ethic and right attitudes at school, but paid work is outside the confines of school and that means they are getting a double dose. This is interesting. The criticism of young people often is that they do not have a work ethic, that they have an attitude problem. Well, they go to work and you hope they are increasing their work ethic and their positive attitudes to work there. Hopefully that is also happening in the schools, but some of the reference is that we are not succeeding in either place—that makes you wonder. Maybe our expectations are so unrealistic these days and we look back to a golden age when we think everything was perfect—

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