Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015 is a disgraceful bill. This is a bill that does nothing more than hurt young people, and it is particularly targeting young people that are employed. This bill does nothing to create jobs. It does nothing to invest in skills. It does nothing to invest in the economy or the future of our young people. This is a mean-spirited, punitive bill designed purely to save a few dollars for the government.

This bill introduces a range of social services measures from the 2015 budget that relate to youth allowance and Newstart for young people. It does a range of things from applying a one-week waiting period to all working age payments, excluding the widow allowance, to requiring young people under the age of 25 to wait four weeks prior to receiving any income support. This measure, of course, is bad enough on its own, but it is a revision from the 2014-15 budget measure that required young people that were under 30 years of age to actively seek work for six months prior to receiving any income support payments at all. This government wanted young people under 30 to not receive any assistance at all and basically go without a dollar for six months if they could not find a job.

We all want people to be actively out there searching for work and looking for work, and young people are doing that, and there should be assistance to do that. The reality is, though, that unemployment numbers for young people are really high because there just are not the jobs there for them. The solution to helping young people get into work is not punishing them. The solution for helping young people get into work is to bolster the economy, and work on a whole range of programs that build their skills and make sure that they are educated and qualified enough to find the jobs that are there. Of course, there are always going to be those who, for periods of time, will not be able to find a job. To punish them for that with the harsh measures that are contained here is reprehensible. This is a government that really has no sense of what it takes to actually work through an economy that has people in it—the people in our economy.

The bill before us is extremely harsh and extremely damaging, and it does nothing to lift the stocks of our country. The youth unemployment rate is currently very high at 13½ per cent—well over double the general unemployment rate, which is now at six per cent. Before the election, when Labor was in government, I recall that unemployment had a five in front of it. Now that the Liberals are in government, it has a six in front of it. It was too high under Labor at five, and it is way too high under the Liberals at six and rising. That is the reality that we face. The answer that the Liberal Party and the Liberal government put forward is to punish people. Their answer to youth unemployment is to punish young people. If you are young person who is out of work—not that you are not looking, not that you are not trying, not that you are not finishing school, going to TAFE, getting qualifications and going to university—and if, even after all of those efforts, you are unable to find work then the government will punish you, and they will punish you quite severely. You will be severely punished. You will be punished by losing any opportunity to receive any payments whatsoever from this Liberal government.

The government will force young people to borrow, beg and in some cases—I dare the thought—steal. That is what this amounts to. We do not live in the sort of world in Australia were we force young people—or anybody else, in such a harsh world where they have no options left to them—to beg, borrow or steal. That is what this bill should have been called: 'Beg, Borrow or Steal'. Young people, regardless of their efforts, regardless of how hard they try, are going to be sent a very clear signal from this unthinking, unkind and very harsh government.

There are about 281,000 young people who are currently are employed. So that is more than a quarter of a million young people that are currently unemployed. They are looking for work, but the jobs do not just appear. We have really high unemployment rates. The rate for the general population is more than six per cent and climbing; if you are a young person, it is more than double that and not looking good at all. The worst part, though, is that in some parts of this country that figure is much higher. I know for a fact that in my electorate of Oxley, between Brisbane and Ipswich, youth unemployment is a serious issue. I know that with my neighbour Shayne Neumann in Blair unemployment is way too high. I know that in parts of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth—and particularly in regional and rural areas—it is way too high. This is a really harsh act on rural and regional centres. We in this place all understand that it is exceptionally difficult for anyone, let alone for young people, to find work in some of those rural and regional areas. In fact, an option for most young people in some of those rural settings is to go to the big capital centres where there is more opportunity.

Rather than come up with some solutions and some programs to help farming communities and small business employ young people and keep people in those rural and regional communities the government have said they are going to do the opposite. The Liberal government say: 'We are going to punish you. We are going to force you out of those communities. We are going to make you look for work in other areas.' This will further exacerbate the difficulty that rural and regional farming communities have. I wonder how many of those communities will be asking their representatives in the Liberal and National parties what they are doing about that and why they are driving more young people out of those communities.

It is beyond belief that this government would make people who are unable to find a job suffer for weeks and months at a time with nothing—no assistance, nothing at all. This is the beg, borrow or steal bill. We have many really severe youth problems in the country. I have seen tears on the other side when we hear of some youth problems in country areas and around rural and regional communities—'What can we possibly do about it?' I will tell you what we should not do: we should not pass this bill. That would be a good start. I do not know that there would be too many farming families who would look at this bill and think it was a good idea for their kids and people in rural towns. Youth unemployment in some rural areas is two or three times higher than this, so how does this help their town and their community? The simple answer to that question is: it just does not. This is a punitive, mean, nasty method by which the government will save a few dollars. The government calls it 'savings' but of course a young person would see this in a very different light.

A range of very well respected groups around the country have come out and said they are appalled by what the government is doing. The National Welfare Rights Network said that the one-month waiting period:

… will place young people in severe financial hardship, leaving them without food, medicines, money for job search and rent. No income means no income—whether it’s for six months or four weeks. There is no place in our social security system for such a harmful approach. The Parliament should reject this plan outright.

I agree: we should just reject this outright. I do not see how we are going to help young people find work when they do not have any money to get on a bus to look for a job or any money to get on a train to turn up at an interview. If they cannot manage to do that then of course the government are going to punish them even further. They will say, 'Because you did not turn up we are going to punish you even more.' This is the response you get from the Liberal and National parties. This is how they deal with issues. You are punished by the government because you cannot find a job in a very difficult employment market. They will punish you. If you have got no money and are living on the street but can get there on time, you may not get that job because you cannot have a shower in the morning. If after applying for 150 jobs you are exasperated and turn to other things, then this government will punish you again. They will punish you severely.

What is the key message that the Liberal and National parties are sending to rural and regional farming communities and families out in the bush, where it is the toughest? That is where it is the toughest. As tough as it is in Sydney, in Brisbane and in the capital centres, there is actually more opportunity. If you live in a farming community that is where it really hurts. Why does the National Party in particular see this as a really good solution? It is a solution to what? Punishing young people for something that is not their fault.

If as part of this bill the Liberal and National parties actually said that they were going to counter this punishment by providing more TAFE courses, more funding for skills, more training and more job opportunities then you might think that at least there is some balance to their punishment, but there is not. In other areas and in other bills they are taking more money out. Only just this week we heard that the government are looking at options—remember this—to make every family pay again for public education. We all pay for public education, but they want families to pay again. They want to means test families—and 'mean' is the correct word here; they are very mean. They want to keep making families pay more and punish them on the way. This is an unbelievable bill.

If at the same time they mete this punishment out to young people there were some glimmer of hope that they were working hard on restoring the economy so unemployment comes down, you would go, 'Maybe there is some balance here,' but there just is not. Before the election there was a debt and deficit crisis. We heard 'debt and deficit' and 'debt and deficit'. Tony Abbott called the fire truck. He turned up with a fuel canister and kept pumping fuel all over the fire and making it worse. Back then there was an emergency—a $17 billion deficit. That was the end of the world. Guess what it is today? It is not less; it is more. How much more? Is it $1 billion or $2 billion more? No. They doubled it. The economic geniuses in the Liberal and National parties took it from $17 billion to $35 billion. Anyone who thinks I am making that up should grab the budget papers and have a read for themselves. It is in their own budget papers.

If that was not bad enough, with their fantastic economic management they doubled the deficit. They are punishing young people. Unemployment is going up. Unemployment under this Liberal and National government goes in only one direction—up. There are more people unemployed. What did they do with the debt that was crippling our economy? Maybe they should start turning the debt down. You would expect there to be less debt. That would be the expectation. I am sure the people in the gallery are thinking, 'Of course, that is what they would do.' No, they did not. They put more debt on. In fact, just in the last budget that Joe Hockey put forward—not the first budget—he added an extra $35 billion of debt. There is another $35 billion. Where are they getting the money for that? They must be borrowing the money. This is a big-borrowing and big-spending government. They spend big but not in the areas that count, not in the areas where we should be getting some help. So they double the deficit, adding more to debt. Unemployment is going up. They want to put a tax on education—they want families to pay not once but twice, with a means test; they will say to all those communities out in rural and regional areas, 'You have got to pay again'. When it comes to TAFE, what do they do? They make it harder for the states to provide good-quality courses and trades training. What did they do with the apprenticeship trades training tools allowance that Labor put in place? They took it away—they want to make it harder for apprentices. Tony's tradies must be looking at this and saying, 'Please stop helping us.' If you are one of Tony's tradies, you must be exasperated with the help that you are getting.

In the next decade or so we are going to be short about 100,000 people with skills in science, technology, engineering and all those areas where Australia has a competitive advantage—where our small business community might actually be able to compete with the rest of the world and move forward. What does this government do with skills training? It de-funds just about every skills program that the former government had put in place. When Labor say that we think it is important that kids learn coding at school and when we encourage young people to go into the sciences and to learn about mathematics and engineering, they think it is a joke—and in fact they were deriding our policies in this area. I do not think students think it is a joke, because that is where the jobs of the future are. In fact, the future is so close that it is right in front of you; that is how close the future is.

Ask any family what they want for their kids, ask teachers what they want their students to learn and ask people where they think the jobs of the future are—ask them. You will not get the answers from a Liberal or National government. In answer to all of these complex questions that we have before us in our economy—the challenges of people getting a job, of young people getting into science, technology, engineering and mathematics, all of those areas—what is the solution that the Liberal and National parties put forward? More punitive measures to punish young people, more cuts to programs, fewer services, fewer skills, less training, less of everything. At the same time, they expect that somehow this will magically help those unemployment numbers. I am still waiting; I think that in another six months I will still be waiting to see if any of those numbers improve, but I very much doubt that they will.

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