Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A number of the measures contained in this bill would have to be some of the harshest measures outlined in the government's budget. They attack some of the most vulnerable in our community; they attack our younger people—people whom we should support. From what previous speakers from the other side have said, it seems that the government does not understand the very complex problem of youth unemployment. The reality is that our jobs market and our economy are changing. The previous speaker suggested that Australia was built on the Aussie battler—a hard day's work for a fair day's pay and for a fair go—but the problem is that we no longer have the notion of a job for life.

You cannot leave school at 16, 17 or 18 today and walk into a job. Those jobs do not exist. There has been structural change in the jobs market and in the economy. The reality for a young person is that they will not work one or two jobs in their lifetime; they will work 10 to 30 jobs over their life. The job turnover rate is increasing, and people are working more and more and in different jobs. At 34 I am one of the younger members of parliament and I am coming up to my 20th anniversary in the workforce. In that time I have had 16 jobs; most of those were when I was younger at high school or university—insecure jobs where you work multiple casual jobs to make up a full-time employment to earn a decent living.

This is not just my story; it is the story of young people today in Australia, because those jobs for life do not exist anymore. What I find particularly disappointing about the measures put forward by the government is that they dismiss a very complex problem. I believe government needs to be doing more to create jobs, but what we see in this bill is the government attacking those who are seeking work. Kate from my electorate wrote me a long letter after the budget about how this bill will affect her. She began by describing what it is like to be unemployed and being a young person in Bendigo where there are limited job opportunities.

People don't like it when you are unemployed. They think you are lazy and wasting their tax paying dollars. In the year that I have been unemployed I have applied for one hundred and seventy jobs. Less than ten bothered to reply.

Those 10 Reponses were all '"unsuccessful applicant" emails … sent out in bulk'. She says that by far the hardest thing about being jobless is being on Centrelink payments. The $316 she gets paid each week barely covers the basics: $180 on rent, $20 on petrol, $45 on electricity and gas, $25 on phone, $10 a week on car insurance and $5 for medication. That leaves about $31.50 a week for everything else—for food, rego, vet, mechanics, clothes and anything else she may need.

This is how the other half lives. Just imagine Kate's life when this government kicks her onto nothing. How will she pay her rent? Or put petrol in the car to get to job interviews? How does she apply for those 170 jobs when she has no financial support from Newstart? Kate wrote:

I've put my name down at all the retail places, magazines, newspapers, technical writers, creative writers and scriptwriters as well as at universities and TAFE for teaching roles in Screenwriting and I've had zero luck. The problem remains that to get a job I need experience but to get experience I need a bloody job.

The area of unemployment is complex especially for young people. It is not that young people are not seeking work, but that we as a society, an economy and a government are not creating enough opportunities or strengthening industries to create jobs and opportunities for young people.

The government should be focused on creating for young people and not punishing them with in a way we have not seen for generations. If this bill is passed by the House and the Senate, it will force people into poverty. Through this bill the government seeks to impose the harshest measures on young job seekers. In addition to making them wait six months before becoming eligible for Newstart or the mandatory work-for-the-dole scheme, the government will kick them off support after six months and they start the cycle again. This approach will actually discourage young people from participating in the process of finding work. The measures will do the opposite to what the government is seeking to do—they will discourage people from seeking work—because they have set the bar way too high.

The question remains: who will support these young people and who will pay their rent when they are receiving no benefits? was speaking to a number of the Bendigo welfare agencies at a recent meeting, and this is one of the major issues they face. They can help young people with food hampers and with emergency relief, but they cannot help them with accommodation. One of our local community leaders, Ken Marchingo, who is the CEO of Haven; Home, Safe, has been very vocal about this attack on people under the age of 30, about preventing them from receiving income support. He says of the notion that people under 30 are somehow so well progressed in their lives that they can afford to lose their job but pay their rent, meet the cost of their utilities and feed and clothe themselves whilst looking for work: 'Who on earth is the government kidding?' He says that it will increase the demand on his services as these young people exit the rental system, become homeless and seek help with accommodation. This bill will increase pressure on other areas of our welfare sector, whether it be through people seeking support in paying their bills or seeking emergency accommodation. This bill seeks to punish, not to help, those we should be helping—those most in need. Ken also wonders whether, in his role, he is going to have to look these young people squarely in the eye and say, 'I can give you a blanket and show you where the bridge is.' He says that he simply does not have enough emergency accommodation to help these young people if they find themselves unemployed and without the income to be able to support themselves.

The other thing we need to focus on is the idea that under 30 is young. Most people in their late 20s, if they have a job, are working towards purchasing their first home. My sister Angela has just turned 30. She said to me that if this bill had come in a few years ago, when she bought her home, and she had found herself unemployed for a period, who was going to help pay her mortgage? What would have happened? What will happen to people who may find themselves unemployed? How will they pay their mortgage? How will they get to and from their next job interview?

Since the introduction of mutual obligation by a former Labor government we have had in this country the idea and expectation—a social contract, mutual obligation—that if job seekers go out and actively seek work, if like Kate they apply for 170 jobs, if they do their best to get work then we will support them. We will provide them with a small amount of financial assistance to help them to seek work. The government's attack on these people suggests one thing, that it does not understand the complexity of the search for employment. Yes, there might be some people who are continually on unemployment benefits, the people that the government says are the people who constantly break the rules. But there is something deep and complex about why they break rules. The majority of young people want to find work, and we should be doing everything we can to support them in finding work rather than punishing them and forcing them into poverty. To force someone to receive absolutely no support but expect them to look for work every single day is ridiculous; it is laughable. How do you get yourself to and from job interviews if you do not have the basics of income support to put the petrol in the car? Kate said that it costs about $10 a week for that petrol. How can you put petrol in the car to get to job interviews if you do not have any financial support? Is the government also suggesting that a person under 30 could move home to live with their parents? That simply is not an option for a number of young people. In most cases people under the age of 30 have already left home. They have established their lives. But, just because there has been a change in their work circumstances, the government is ready to dump them on the streets and say to them: 'It's up to you to fend for yourself.'

The government needs to focus on creating jobs, on supporting industry in developing jobs that these people can get and that will last longer than a few months or a few years. However, we have seen from the government not a jobs plan but just more rhetoric, with the Minister for Employment suggesting: 'Let them pick fruit.' This policy idea, of letting them pick fruit, is not good enough; it is not a long-term plan. If we are serious about tackling the youth unemployment problem we need to be serious about creating good, secure work; jobs that people can count on. Our nation is at its best when people are working together for the common good. Self-interest alone does not create a fair and decent society. If we are truly committed to a society in which every person is treated with respect and dignity, we must support people when they need help and support. We are still a social-welfare state. To help people break out of the poverty cycle you support them when they need it. But this bill not only forces people into poverty it crushes their confidence.

On Friday nights, when I get the chance, I pop along to the Eaglehawk Saltworks dinner. It is a free community dinner that brings people together. It started on the basis of wanting people to be able to have a warm meal, so that at least once a week they could have a decent meal and a catch up. It has become more than that. It cuts across the age demographic; there are older people and younger people there. For most of them it is their social outing for the week, because they do not have the income or the means to get out. The community comes together and supports them by providing this meal. Most of the young people I have met them are homeless. Most of them are couch surfing. Most of them are trying their best to get back into the paid workforce, but in regional areas the opportunities for employment, if you are somebody who is down on their luck, are limited. How can you expect somebody to be ready for work if they do not have a permanent shelter over their head, if they do not have a permanent place of residence? When I talk to these young people about what it is like to couch-surf and how they go about applying for jobs, one of the first things they say is: 'Lisa, my first priority is to make sure I've got somewhere to sleep tomorrow night, next week, the month after. Really, I want to make sure I've got somewhere to sleep, and then I'm looking for work.' That is the problem with this measure. If you take away people's income support, which ensures that they have accommodation—that they have a roof over their head, that they can pay their rent—their priority is not to find work; their priority is to find somewhere warm to sleep at night.

In conclusion, I will read a letter to the editor on an issue that a number of people in my community have spoken out against. The letter, titled 'Don't demonise the young unemployed,' was published in my local paper, the Bendigo Advertiser, on Tuesday, 3 June. It reads:

In trying to legitimise proposed structural changes to unemployment benefits for young people under thirty, the minister for Social Services … has attempted to demonise—

young people—

saying, "they can no longer go on living on the couch for the dole". A spokesperson for his office recently said further that, "it is good for young people to work". Both of these statements presuppose that all young people are happy to be living on a paltry sum of money spending their days watching daytime TV … This is simply not the case.

Young people spend months and months looking for work. That has certainly been Kate's experience. That is why I call on the government— (Time expired)

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