Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Hansard source

I listened with great interest to the member for Bowman's contribution just then. It is not just about saying go out and have a go for 28 days. It is saying to people to try and do that with absolutely no money. That is what the issue is at the heart of this bill. I would like to see him try to go out and spend 28 days getting dressed, going on the transport system, having to buy lunch while you are out and looking for 28 jobs but having absolutely not a dollar of income to do it on. That is, at heart, the issue. We do not disagree with many of the principles the member for Bowman outlined in terms of mutual responsibility under these payments and about requiring people to participate and—as he said—to have a go. We just do not believe that is reasonable or fair to ask people to do that without any form of income support. Not everybody is in as privileged a position as many of us may have been at that age to have family who could support us through that time. That is at the heart of why we have these concerns with this bill.

The challenge, obviously—and the member for Bowman referred to this quite rightly—is there is persistent high youth unemployment across our nation. In particular, in regions like my own in Illawarra, it is one of the most serious and persistent social and economic issues that we confront. It is clearly the case that one of the flow-on effects across the developed world from the global financial crisis has been its impact on employment opportunities for young people. In Australia, we have seen a serious drying up of entry-level jobs. These are the ones that give young people a start in the workforce. This increasingly applies to young people with post-secondary qualifications. It is not only those without any employment specific education and training who are seeing the opportunities for entry-level jobs dry up right before their eyes.

Many young people are telling me and, I am sure, many of my colleagues in this place across both sides of the chamber that nearly every job they would like to apply for says an essential criteria is a minimum of two or three years experience. That requirement then blocks them from getting a start to get the required minimum experience in the first place, so they end up in this no-win situation where they want to get the experience they need to get a permanent job but then all the jobs that they are potentially qualified to apply for all require experience. It is a really persistent problem for them. And I am sure all my colleagues have heard this from young people who are in the job market.

Young people are also increasingly relying on cobbling together multiple jobs or indeed contracts—many of them working on short-term contracts—in order simply to make enough to live on. This type of work then locks them out of reliable or permanent work and it leaves them precariously attached to the workforce. Whilst sometimes this can lead to a permanent job after a period of time, that does not seem to be the common experience for many young people. In this context, therefore, I believe it is completely wrong for the government to seek to implement a bill that will only add to the financial stress and difficulty for young people in our communities.

This bill introduces a number of social service measures from the 2015 budget relating to both youth allowance and Newstart for young people. I would like to briefly outline these before indicating where I stand on the matters before us and then, more importantly, to discuss the significance of supporting education and training opportunities to assist young people with gaining employment.

Firstly, the bill seeks to reintroduce the initiative from the 2014 budget about a waiting period but with a different time frame proposed in this budget. Secondly, it seeks to revisit that proposal that required young people under 30 to actively seek work for six months before receiving income support payments. This was opposed by the parliament and now the government is seeking to reintroduce the policy with a reduced period of four weeks, with a proposal to delay the introduction of that until 1 July 2016. Labor continues to oppose this proposition as it will leave young job seekers under 25 was nothing to live on for a full month. This would also limit their ability to participate in job-seeking activities as they would have no income available to them. Therefore, it seems a particularly short-sighted and mean proposition. Clearly this proposition would push young people into poverty and potentially trap them in an endless cycle of no income support at all, thereby increasing poverty, crisis and homelessness.

Thirdly, the bill continues the previous budget measure to extend youth allowance (other) from 22- to 24-year-olds in lieu of Newstart and sickness allowance, also simply making life harder for these young people. We continues to oppose that proposition. Fourthly, the bill proposes to cease the low-income supplement paid as part of the compensation for the carbon price from 1 July 2017. This is a payment that is made to singles and couples on low incomes. Labor is willing to consider this proposition but not in the context of the other proposals in this bill.

Finally, and fifthly, the bill seeks to re-introduce measures from the 2014 budget on indexation but with the exclusion of pensions and an amended start date. Specifically, it would maintain at level for three years the income-free areas for all working age allowances, other than student payments and parenting payment single, from the existing start date of 1 July 2015. Also, it would maintain at level for three years the income-free areas and other means test thresholds for student payments, including the student income bank limits, with a start date of 1 January 2016. This measure was opposed by Labor in the context of the 2014 budget and we continue to oppose it.

It is clear the government has actually learnt nothing from the fundamental unfairness of last year's budget. This budget is just as unfair as the last when it comes to young job seekers. This is compounded by the fact that this budget has done nothing to re-instate any of the savage cuts in last year's budget to the skills portfolio, in particular for apprentices and trainees. Apprenticeships and traineeships are important pathways for young people to undertake education and training that would improve their opportunities to gain a job.

Let me just recap the extent of the cuts in last year's budget. The government's early action on apprenticeships was to introduce the one initiative they had taken to the election on skills. They introduced their apprentice loan scheme. But we in Labor were quite angry on behalf of apprentices that in outlining this scheme before the election the government did not outline to apprentices that it would be at the cost of the Tools For Your Trade payments which provide direct financial assistance to all eligible apprentices to get the tools they need for their trade and to assist with other costs. I am sure that many members have received the same feedback that I have about the intense disappointment felt among apprentices about this decision.

Last year, I visited a construction site in Werribee, outside Melbourne, with my colleague the member for Lalor. We spoke directly to about 20 apprentices across a number of trades. They were all angry about the removal of the Tools For Your Trade payments and, to be honest, quite scathing about the Trade Support Loans as a replacement option. Indeed, in the in-detail budget session last week, the minister indicated that only around 24,000 apprentices across the nation had taken up the loan. Given that there are several hundred thousand young people in apprenticeships at any one time, that is a very, very low uptake. This morning, with the Leader of the Opposition, I visited some apprentices at the Canberra Institute of Technology. I asked the class, 'How many of you have actually taken up the Trade Support Loans?' There was only one in that class who had. All the rest had no interest in undertaking debt. So they clearly missed the impact of Tools For Your Trade.

Just as importantly, there were very significant apprenticeship support programs abolished in the budget. The first one was the Apprenticeship Access Program. This particularly targeted very disadvantaged young people to get them the skills, appropriate knowledge and familiarity with work culture, as the previous speaker spoke about, such that they were prepared to undertake an apprenticeship. In November 2012, I visited the MTA Autostart Access Program in Granville with the member for Parramatta. I saw firsthand an impressive program that helped people who were very vulnerable job seekers get themselves ready to gain a full apprenticeship. During that visit, I met local car business owners, managers and representatives of the Motor Traders' Association. They were all very dedicated to helping young adults get a start in a region plagued by youth unemployment. They were very proud of the success they were having in transitioning so many of those young people into full apprenticeships. With no notice or evidence of failure, this scheme was simply abolished in the 2014 budget.

Another program that was abolished was the Apprenticeships Mentoring Program. Many of my colleagues would be aware that there has been a consistent concern about the number of apprentices who are actually completing their training. This program was very much appreciated not only by apprentices but also by employers. In March of 2013, as the minister, I launched the Construction Apprenticeship Mentoring Scheme at the Master Builders Association of the ACT training centre.

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