Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to express my support for the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Youth Jobs Path: Prepare, Trial, Hire) Bill. Let me be very frank: this bill is about jobs. It is very interesting to hear the member for Longman opposite talk about this issue and what is wrong with this bill when there are people in her electorate—in Morayfield and Caboolture—who have been on Newstart for years and who are just waiting for an opportunity, a chance, to get into the workforce.

This bill is about increasing job opportunities for Australians. It builds on the success of the coalition government's Work for the Dole program. This bill will give effect to the Youth Jobs PaTH Program, which Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced in North Lakes, in my electorate of Petrie, on the very first day of the July election campaign. I was very pleased that he came to announce this. I thought it was a great practical program that would help further reduce youth unemployment. In the last three years—since the government was elected in 2013—youth unemployment in my region has fallen significantly. I will repeat that: it has fallen significantly in the last three years. This legislation will help to make it fall even further, I believe.

I make an effort to get around my electorate and meet many people from all walks of life. I also make an effort to get out and meet small-business owners and middle-sized business owners as well because they employ a lot of people. The feedback is valuable, and I pass it on here to different people. But one of the things that small business owners mention to me is staffing, and having good staff, and the fact that young people often do not have a good understanding of the values and behaviours that are expected in the workplace and in the recruitment process.

In a couple of weeks I will be running my fourth Job Seeker Boot Camp in the electorate of Petrie. It is a great program, and I would encourage other members in this House, from both sides, to perhaps take it up. I get employers from different fields. They might be from hospitality, manufacturing or trades. They might be professionals. I invite all the unemployed from my electorate to the Job Seeker Boot Camp. It is an opportunity for those employers to say, 'When I'm hiring, this is what I look for; when I'm hiring, we want people to turn up to work on time, to look the part.' I ran a small business before I came into this place, employing 15 people or so. I had a guy come in awhile back. He turned up and said, 'Have you got a job for me?' and he was wearing a Tupac shirt—I do not know whether you know who Tupac is; he is a deceased rapper, and he was on the shirt and holding up his middle finger. I said, 'There's nothing going at the moment', and he was about to walk out the door and I grabbed him, took him out the back and gave him a bit of advice that, if he is looking for work, then wearing a shirt with Tupac with his middle finger up is probably not a good way to turn up.

The Job Seeker Boot Camp is an opportunity for employers to say directly to those people on Newstart: if you are serious about work, here are some real tips that will help you. One of the other things employers say is that they look at the resume and if the jobseeker has moved around a lot, if they have been in a job five months here and six months there and nine months there, it often does not get too far. These are important tips that we can pass on to jobseekers who are on Newstart in all of our electorates. At the end of the day, I am sure those opposite and those on this side of the House want to see people have work. And the member for Longman is right when she says that jobs are important to people in her electorate. They are important to people in my electorate as well. People need a place to go on Monday morning.

Employability skill training through the PaTH program will give young people the opportunity to learn these vital skills and develop the attitude they should bring to the workplace. The first three weeks of training will help young people build practical industry skills, with a focus on concepts like working in a team, presentation and communication. The next three weeks will centre on advanced job preparation and job-hunting skills. The trial part, the second part of the PaTH program, is about the internship for four to 12 weeks. Internships are common. Many people opposite—including the member for Fenner, who I think has had 100 or so through his office—offer internships. Internships are often in unions and political offices. Why can't they be applied to business, where a person who has been on Newstart can come into a business with five, 10, 20 or 30 employees who have KPIs, who have goals, who are dressed ready for work every day? How will that rub off on that person who has perhaps been on Newstart for six, 12 or 18 months? I think it will rub off in a very positive way, a very practical way that will prepare that young person to land a job—perhaps their first job—that will see them in the workplace for years to come, paying income tax for the government to invest in essential services and perhaps doubling or tripling their Newstart income.

There will be some 120,000 placements over four years. These placements will help young jobseekers who have been in employment services for six months or more to gain valuable work experience within a real business. We will also provide an extra $200 on top of the welfare payment they already receive. This is an incentive payment. Those opposite talk about $4 an hour as though it is some sort of wage. That is not correct. They know that as well. This is an incentive payment on top of their Newstart payment. It is a little bonus, so to speak, that says to them: 'Look, come on: here's an opportunity. You pick the industry that you'd like to get involved with and we'll help you find an employer for you to get involved with. And here's an extra $200 a fortnight on top of Newstart to help you.' It is not an employment payment. It is an incentive payment.

I think it is a very practical way to help those young people, when we know high youth unemployment right around this country exists. It has been like that for years. This is an opportunity for the crossbenchers, for the Senate, for those opposite and for those on this side of the parliament to say, 'This is new. Let's give it a go.' How can it hurt? How can it hurt when young people have a real opportunity to get the valuable experience that employers often say they are looking for?

'Hire' is the third part. Businesses that decide to take on a PaTH program participant will receive a wage subsidy of between $6,500 and $10,000. This bonus is a smarter way of leveraging what taxpayers would otherwise spend on welfare payments. Of course, this occurs only in the hiring stage. In that third stage they are in the job for six months. It is not like 'you start tomorrow and here is the money'. It is a matter of working through this and, if you decide after the four- to 12-week period you want to move to stage 3 and hire this individual, and they work out, great; you offer them a full-time job. It is very practical.

On this side of the House we in the coalition government believe that the best form of welfare is a job. The ultimate goal is to break welfare dependency before this turns into lifelong dependency, and to move people into states of self-reliance so that when they wake up on Monday morning they have a job to go to, they have purpose and they can be participating in a very practical way, like the rest of us in this place are doing.

Australia cannot afford to leave thousands of young people to a lifetime of welfare dependency. We know that once a young person becomes unemployed for the long-term, and from what I understand it is particularly around that mark when they have been on Newstart for five years, their chances of successfully finding employment decline drastically.

The Youth Jobs PaTH program will not just prepare young Australians for work; it will provide them with real work experience and give employers incentives to take the jobseekers on. When you get someone who is new and has had no experience and has perhaps been on Newstart for six months or more, it is not like you bring them in on day one and they are actively producing in the company. Often you have to get another staff member to train them for four or five weeks to get them to where they need to go. Of course, not all businesses would be willing to do that, and that is why the incentive payment is there. The Youth Jobs PaTH program will not just prepare young Australians to work but give them the experience they need.

Importantly, the program will also help young people gain confidence both in themselves and in the fact that there are jobs out there. Do you know how many young people—and I guess older people, but in this case it applies to young people—have applied for jobs, saying they have sent off hundreds of resumes and they do not get anything back? Some employers do not even give them the courtesy of a letter back to say they have been unsuccessful. Can you imagine what this will do to those young people as far as confidence goes—to give them the confidence to turn up to work every day with other people who are actively employed full-time? I think it will be an enormous boost to their confidence, I really do. It will incentivise their transition into employment.

Labor's six years in office saw more than 500,000 jobs lost in small businesses alone. Now they have the audacity, when we have a plan for jobs and growth, to oppose the company tax cuts we want to implement and the extension of the instant asset tax write-off, which I believe will play such an important part in creating jobs. In the election campaign, what were the arguments the Leader of the Opposition put up? All he could say was that billion-dollar companies would be the winners from this and that all the profits would go to overseas investors. That is what it was. He spoke only about billion-dollar companies; he did not speak about small business or medium business, and that is where the potential is in relation to company tax cuts and increasing the instant asset tax write-off—the companies that turn over between $20 million and $50 million and employ perhaps 140 people. If you can increase their workforce by 10 per cent, that is 14 people.

I know there is a lot of talk about a small businesses turning over less than $10 million or whatever. Well, those businesses employ only about 20 people. So, if you increase the workforce there, you end up getting two extra. Where the jobs will make a difference is in those medium businesses. And I would say to the senators and to the crossbench that they need to look at that personally. I think it will make a real difference. We cannot improve jobs in this country if we cannot legislate the plan that we have, that we took to the election, in order to help people.

I have been out to some of the Work for the Dole trials in my electorate. There have been a number of them—Deception Bay Police-Citizens Youth Club, Redcliffe Police-Citizens Youth Club and some places in Margate. I have been out to visit the people who are involved in that program and to encourage them to tell me what they want to do when they get to work and to have some goals and to achieve them. A couple of them say, 'You know we don't want to be here, Luke.' And I say: 'Well, look at it this way: when you go for your next job interview you can say you've been working on this, this and this or that you've been volunteering for the local PCYC or helping this organisation. It will only help you get to where you want to go.'

I believe this PaTH program will play a big role. I ask members to open their eyes in relation to this. Let's test this—see how it goes for a few years. I believe it will have great results. We live in a country of tremendous opportunities. I believe it is so important for people to identify what it is that they want out of life and to go for it. I call upon both the House and the Senate—everyone in here—to support this plan for jobs and growth. Thank you.

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