Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on these bills relating to the PaTH program, which is a very important program and one that I am very passionate about. I am very passionate about giving young people the opportunity to get a job. In the Abbott government I had the privilege of being responsible for the implementation of jobactive, and an important part of jobactive was getting young people off welfare and into work.

It was interesting to note the comment by the member for Bendigo when she said that we should be looking at more apprenticeships for young people. In the development of jobactive I talked to a lot of employers and employment service providers. In fact, when I was in Melbourne I went into one particular employment service provider and there was a list of apprenticeships on the board. There were positions for plumbers, there were positions for electricians and there were positions for carpenters. I said to the CEO of that particular organisation, 'Why is it that these apprenticeships have not been snapped up? Why is it that they are on a board and in significant numbers when youth unemployment is so relatively high?' The answer he gave was quite simple. It was that the young people who were presenting to that office did not have the skills and did not have the capability to take up an apprenticeship.

That is a very disappointing situation. I think it is indicative of the challenges that we are trying to overcome with the PaTH program because, if I put to one side the issue of higher skilled apprenticeships and look at even basic entry-level jobs, employers were saying to me, as I got around the country as the minister responsible for developing the jobactive program, that young people were presenting at the gates of their businesses without the necessary basic skills to hold down a job. They are skills that I would hold for granted and you, Deputy Speaker Georganas, would hold for granted, as people who have been in the workplace for a long time would, but they lacked the necessary basic skills—turning up on time, how you deal with your workmates and how you deal with customers. These are skills which are absolutely elementary but are skills which many young people, who perhaps have been in a household where they have seen intergenerational unemployment and have never seen anyone go to work each day, simply do not have.

The gem of the PaTH program is that it addresses the key barriers to those young people moving off welfare and those young people getting that all important start. Maybe it is not the job that they wanted as their dream job, but maybe it is the job that gets them off the welfare train onto the work train and the benefits that come with work—the financial benefits and the non-financial benefits. PaTH works in a number of ways. It addresses the issues of employability skills that I mentioned previously—those basic skills that are lacking. It also addresses the fact that many young people who have been on welfare for a long time have a fear of their own capability and have a fear of moving away from the welfare safety net. So a young person can stay within their welfare system, can have an exposure to the workforce, can learn new skills and, hopefully, if all goes well, move into a long-term sustainable job. That is a really exciting outcome.

The PaTH program firstly addresses basic employability skills. Young people will learn those basic skills that they need to hold down a job—turning up on time, how you dress and all those things. The next element is an internship of four to 12 weeks with an employer. Regrettably, many employers are reluctant to take on a young person who does not have the sort of experience they need. The internship will assist in breaking that barrier by giving employers a $1,000 payment to encourage them to take on a young person, and then we are giving the young person a financial incentive of $200 every fortnight to give them a financial reward, give them a return for their effort, give them a return for investing in themselves. The internship is an important part of this program—it allows a young person to fit into a workplace on a no obligation basis for that young person and a no obligation basis for the employer and hopefully if there is a favourable outcome the young person can progress further through the system. But we are overcoming that employer reluctance to take on a young person. One of the challenges I had in framing jobactive was that employers unfortunately had had unhappy experiences with putting on young people—young people who repeatedly did not work in their business. PaTH helps overcome that by providing the opportunity for an employer to have a look at a young person and for the young person to have a look at the employment landscape in that business and see if the mix is right for them, see if they are going to get on. I think that is a very important element.

The third important element of PaTH addresses another barrier to taking on someone that we hear about repeatedly from employers—the fact that a new employee, young or old, is not as productive in the early weeks and months as they may be when they have been in the job for a long time. Under PaTH we have wage subsidies of up to $10,000 to encourage employers to put on an eligible job seeker. So we have the basic employability skills, we have got the internship, where the employer and the young person can see how they work together, and then we have the third element which is the wage subsidy, which defrays the high costs in the initial weeks and months of putting on a new employee.

Members opposite have made some negative comments, but I hope they will give PaTH a chance. I hope they will support the thought that we want to give those kids who do not believe in themselves an opportunity; we want to give those kids a chance. There are many ways we can approach this and there will always be a range of views as to how things should be done, but I think the elements in PaTH address the key barriers effectively. It is a massive financial commitment, of some $750 million, but when you look at that in terms of the some 120,000 young people this program could help and the cost of them staying on benefits for an extended period, it is an incredibly good investment—a great investment in our youth, a great economic investment and a great community investment. The longitudinal studies that have been carried out on other nationalities are clear—if you are long-term unemployed at a young age you are about 70 per cent likely to be long-term unemployed when you are around 40. The imperative is huge. We need to get our young people off the couch. We need to get them believing in themselves. We need to give them the skills they need to be competitive in the workforce because, whilst in this country unemployment is relatively low in many areas, there are still some problematic areas, and youth unemployment is intractably high. Why is that? Because employers are choosing not to employ young people. We have to overcome the barriers. I believe PaTH does this. I believe it is an appropriate suite of measures. Is that the only solution? Clearly not, and members opposite have articulated a range of views on what this government should be doing instead, but certainly in the context of I think good policy the PaTH program ticks the boxes—the PaTH program has the capacity to get a great number of young people up off the couch into work, believing in themselves, setting up a financial future for themselves and allowing them to walk down the street with their head held high because they have a job and they do not have to depend on benefits.

I will draw my conclusion to a close. I believe in this program. I think that members opposite should carefully consider the elements proposed in this legislation. This is not about cutting entitlements; this is not about displacing other workers. This is about giving kids a chance. I commend the bill to the House.

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