Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the Labor opposition to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Youth Jobs Path: Prepare, Trial, Hire) Bill 2016. I say at the outset that Labor's position is not to oppose this bill in the House but to refer it to a Senate inquiry. I am the shadow minister for human services, and this bill will be administered by the agency of Centrelink. But it is important to put on record that this government does not care about welfare recipients. And while this bill promises action to help people find work, given the way the government treats age pensioners, disability support pensioners and the thousands of unemployed people across the country who want to work I have very little faith that it will do that. Ask anyone in a Centrelink office, 'Do you think the government wants to help you find a job or live with dignity?' and their response—after waiting, in many cases, for several hours on the phone or for many months for processing claims—will be universal: of course the answer will be no, they do not.

This bill is more of the same rhetoric from this government. All those who are unemployed, even through no fault of their own, are referred to as leaners and are characterised, as we heard from the member for Bowman the other day, as people who are deliberately trying to rip the system off, deliberately trying to undermine the welfare system in this country. Of course, that attitude is completely unacceptable. Members of this place, even on the other side, know that is not true when we see these people in our electorate offices almost every day—people who are long-term unemployed, people who are relying on the social security net that we have in this country and that we should be very proud of. The worst thing about this bill is that it does not actually seem to fix the problem, and it may even create a raft of new issues for people who are long-term unemployed, particularly young people.

From the outset, I have to note the incredibly bad acronym that has been chosen for this piece of legislation. It frankly makes no sense. That is always a bad sign. The acronym is: PaTH. For the illumination of those opposite, there is no 'A' in the title 'Prepare, Trial, Hire'. This speaks to what this bill appears to be—an election campaign thought bubble. I want to focus on that for a little while. It was announced throughout the election campaign and it was clearly announced without much thought, without much consultation and without any consideration given to the implications of such a scheme, which have been well enunciated by the member for Longman.

PaTH is allegedly designed to prepare young people for work by giving jobseekers pre-employment training and voluntary internships of four to 12 weeks. Jobseekers will receive an additional $200 per fortnight on top of their current payments while participating in this program. That all sounds fine, except there is nothing to back up that rhetoric. Businesses will be paid $1,000 to take on an intern and a subsidy of up to $10,000 if they hire them at the end of the internship, except there is no guarantee in this legislation that there will be a job at the end of this internship.

The previous member who spoke referred to the importance of giving people the experience of being employed, and no-one would disagree with those sentiments. But this legislation gives businesses the potential opportunity to use young people as cheap labour, as labour that can displace other workers who are employed, and to exploit this scheme by having people work for them who will cost them nothing. That is a very great risk under this legislation. This very risk underpins the fact that very little thought has been put into this legislation.

There are serious concerns about this program, both on this side of the chamber and out in the community. Programs like Work for the Dole are already hopelessly failing young people. In fact, only 10 per cent of participants end up in full-time work three months after exiting the program. No-one in this place on either side of the House likes to think that many, many thousands of young people somehow find themselves being long-term unemployed. It is really interesting that the government talks about unemployment rates being in single digit figures. In many electorates, particularly on the Central Coast and in the Hunter, which I am very familiar with, and I am sure in many other parts of this country, the unemployment rates for young people are not five or six per cent, not nine or 10 per cent but in fact 11 to 17 per cent, and even more in some places.

This policy has absolutely been developed on the run. It sounds good at first blush, but once you look into the detail the problems are exposed. According to the Interns Australia, the peak body for interns in this country, only one in five internships will lead to a job. This is not a good statistic. Has the government done its cost-benefit analysis on this so-called investment?

The 271,000 unemployed young people across Australia need help getting into jobs—we all agree with that. That means giving them the best possible education when they are at school and making sure that they have access to the best possible training. It also means creating new jobs. We heard a lot about jobs and growth at the last election, but we have not seen much in terms of action. The government's record is very poor on all these points. Our VET and TAFE systems are in trouble. We have seen widespread rorting by private colleges and providers. If you want young people to get into the workforce, why not start here? Why not start by helping create some new jobs?

Schemes like this have not worked in the past. The government's own figures show that, when it comes to Work for the Dole programs, nearly 90 per cent of participants are not in full-time work once they exit the program. The sad truth is Australia's youth are counting the cost of the Turnbull government's failure to develop a real jobs plan for the nation. If this is being put forward as a real jobs plan then it fails on all counts. Under the PaTH program, the opposition is concerned that young people will be forced to pay an even heavier price through the program's apparent flaws.

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