Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That kind of professional spin—the lecture from the previous speaker about getting out in the real world—from people who have only worked in electoral offices, whether it is for David Clarke MLC or the member for Parramatta, is the kind of politics that was rejected at the weekend in Victoria. The real world was branch stacking for the Liberal Party with David Clarke for a number of years. He says that the situation here is too ambitious, it is too costly et cetera. So their solution to an ambitious program is to totally abolish it and do nothing, and we have got a situation here where a program of $2.5 billion up till 2018 has been abandoned and $950 million has been slashed from it, coincidentally in the same week that they destroyed the South Australian automobile industry.

They say that we can get some statistics that indicate a significant number of people who have gone through trade training colleges did not receive employment in the sector that they tried to go into. That kind of statistic, that people seek in life to go down a particular road and the availability of jobs in that particular occupation is not there, can be produced about virtually every program and scheme. But let's not run away from the crucial factor as to why people might not be getting employment. If John Howard is emulated by the current Prime Minister in many fashions, it has not been too successful. But in regards to unemployment, the current Prime Minister has been very successful because he has lifted youth unemployment to around 14 per cent—figures not seen for quite some time.

If you look at these suburbs in my electorate such as Claymore, Minto, Casula and Ingleburn, they are quite distant from the CBD. They are lacking in cross-city transport. They would have higher unemployment, both general and youth unemployment, than the rest of Sydney. Rather than an outcome such as Mount Carmel in my electorate, where the former minister before the elections went out there and opened a facility which is in the catering sector with new kitchens which has employment dealings with the Campbelltown Catholic Club which has a career path for people who do not want to go to university, rather than have the celebration by the student body, the teachers and the parents about that future, what they have decided is to scrap the whole scheme. A significant number of schools in my electorate such as Casula High School, Lurnea, Robert Townson, Sarah Redfern, Sule College et cetera, which are in areas of high unemployment, worsened by the current government's performance, will not have that future.

This is part of a broader pattern, of course. We recently had the NATSEM figures produced with regard to overall budget changes in this country. I would remind you that the current Prime Minister has said that NATSEM is highly reliable. It is credible; it can be believed. NATSEM made the point that the Werriwa electorate, where we are talking about scrapping these trade training schemes, had a 0.859 correlation with regard to how the budget was negatively affecting the electorate. I would remind you that there are only seven electorates out of 150 in the whole country with ratings over 0.7, and we are at 0.859, the third worst in the country.

We have a situation where the overall budget hurts my electorate. We have a situation where they have changed the rules on Newstart and other schemes for young unemployed people. We have a situation where Youth Connections has been abolished—partnership brokers are basically out the door—and the national careers advisory committee has also been scrapped. This meant the abolition of a scheme that they said was too ambitious, which was trying too hard. They were saying that, basically, it was not going to be accomplished. Their policy is to force unemployed young people onto no payments for six-month periods to make it more difficult for people in my electorate to get to university. They are giving a free-for-all to the private sector for universities to increase the fees to levels not heretofore seen, in a way which will undermine regional universities such as the University of Western Sydney.

Before the last election 510 announcements had been made, where half the schools were already operating and the others were in either the design or the construction phase. So this is a scheme that should not have been condemned. It should not have been put on the altar of 'budgetary reform', as they put it. In this situation, people in my electorate are going to be denied options to complete these courses in high school to give themselves a future career. I condemn very strongly the measures of the government.

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