Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

Certainly, the government is absolutely focused on ensuring that young people have the very best prospects of getting into work. We firmly believe that young people should either be earning or learning, or if they are not doing either of those things they should be involved in some form of mutual obligation. We believe that we need to encourage young people at every opportunity to get and keep a job.

The measures that we outlined are focused on getting young people into a job and focused on them doing everything within their power and leaving no stone unturned in the pursuit of that job. Now, if a young person is without work they have the option to be engaged in an appropriate training program. That can enhance their employment prospects. We believe that is a very important thing, that young people have the skills to get into work.

We also believe, though, that if after a period they are unable to find a job—a period of six months—they should be involved in a form of mutual obligation, and work for the dole is the appropriate measure. The measures that the government announced are mindful of the fact that many job seekers face different circumstances. The measures that were announced apply only to those most job-ready job seekers and consideration is given to people in positions, such as principal carer for parents, people with a partial work capacity—those more disadvantaged job seekers known, as you would know as formerly being in this sector—streams 3 and 4, DES clients and part-time apprentices. So this has been thought through very carefully to encourage those most job-ready job seekers to get into work as quickly as possible.

The measures that were announced on budget night are part of a range of measures which the government has announced or put in place. We recently implemented our Job Commitment Bonus, encouraging young people to get and keep a job. That is a very good program because it gives young people a bonus of some $2½ thousand if they get off welfare, get into a job and stay in a job for a period of 12 months. If they stay off welfare for a further period of 12 months, there is a further bonus of $4,000 payable. That is potentially $6½ thousand to encourage young people into work.

We also have our Relocation Assistance Program to assist young people to go to where the jobs are. That is very important. We understand the fact that many people, if they have been on benefits, can be struggling financially and the cost of moving to a new location to take up a job could be prohibitive. We have an enhanced Relocation Assistance Program to encourage young people to move to where the jobs are.

Then we have the Tasmanian Jobs Program to encourage employers in Tasmania—the state with the highest unemployment level of any state in Australia—to put on an additional employee. Hopefully that employee would be a young person. And then we have Work For the Dole—a very important program which can give young people the skills they need, the very basic skills that so many employers are telling me are lacking in the job seekers who present at the gates of their business. We have a range of measures that are aimed at assisting young people into work.

We believe that the best form of welfare is a job. We believe that the very best thing we can do is to prevent young people from drifting out of school into the despair of long periods of welfare. That is why we are absolutely focused on these types of programs. The very best thing we can do to create opportunities for young job seekers is to grow a strong economy. That is why we handed down a budget just recently in the House that set Australia up for the future and invested in the future rather than pursue the path of members opposite, which was to spend for today. Yet the members opposite are standing in the way of a budget that can create the sort of economic growth and job opportunities that young people need.

We are coming up to 30 June and a new Senate will come into play on 1 July, but we would dearly love members opposite to get behind the government right here, right now, and pass the repeal of the carbon tax and pass the repeal of the mining tax so that we can remove those job destroying taxes and, in doing so, create more opportunities for young people. Government programs have a role to play—they certainly have their place—but nothing can create jobs and nothing can create opportunities more effectively than a strong economy.

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