Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

What is becoming clear is this: this is a massive new program. What is being proposed here or what will be supported by this bill is something way higher than what the government has ever done. They have an existing program, the National Work Experience Program. It takes 6,000 people. This program boosts that up five times: 30,000 young Australians will go through this program. It is an entirely new system. A lot of people have legitimate concerns: that jobs will be displaced; that people who would have got a job independently will be replaced by an intern. And 'intern' has not even been defined; there is no definition from those opposite of what an 'intern' is. They may be an intern barista; they may be an intern construction worker; they may be an intern retail assistant—which completely flies in the face of what the general public thinks an intern is.

Those people would be paid below the national minimum wage. Bear in mind: the national minimum wage right now is $17.70 an hour. But an intern who works 25 hours a week and receives only their Newstart payments plus the $200 top-up will earn $14.50 an hour. The small business minister was saying that the ACTU should apologise because they were misrepresenting the situation. Guess what? The stats are clear. These people—these interns; these young Australians—will be brought in at a lower rate than the national minimum wage.

As wisely observed by the member for Mayo, we have no understanding about what the span of hours will be on any given day. They are supposed to work 15 to 25 hours a week. How do we know that they will not work 12 hours a day without a break? That is a legitimate question that was being posed. We have had questions about whether or not penalty rates would be undermined.

We have had a whole stack of concerns. But guess what? We are not going to get answers today, because what is going to happen is: the minister at the table here is just going to do them as one job lot and thinks that he will answer them in five minutes. And he will not. None of the questions that have been raised through the course of this consideration in detail, about a program that is massively expanding on what is currently being done, that will involve young people—questions that everyone wants to get legitimate answers to—will not be answered by this government.

It is a clear demonstration that, as the member for Barton said, they engaged in an election thought-bubble. Six months after this program was announced in the federal budget, they still cannot define what an intern is. They still cannot give us assurances that these people will be covered by workers' compensation. They still cannot give us assurances that the interns will not be used to displace jobs, in a market where people are already underemployed. Underemployment is already at an all-time high. People are already concerned about wages growth flatlining. There are all these concerns out there. But this government will not answer.

And I am sorry, but—with the greatest respect to the minister, who I have great time for: it is not good enough, Minister, to have all these members of parliament raise legitimate questions and to have them just pushed off into one five-minute job lot. Not only do these members deserve answers; the Australian public, who will be seeing this new thought-bubble unveiled, deserve answers as well.

It is basically April 2017 when this program comes in, and we still do not have answers about what is going to happen. I actually think we do need to get answers. We need to get answers to the question about workers' compensation, because, in the submission made by the department to the Senate inquiry that is going on now, published on the website, we are now told that the Department of Employment has insurance arrangements in place to cover jobseekers undertaking activities, including group personal accident insurance and combined liability insurance. But what happens if someone is permanently incapacitated as a result of an accident through being involved in an internship? What happens to them? At what rate do they get paid out? At what rate can they expect income support? Where do they go? Do they go on to DSP? What happens there? They will be placed in the invidious situation of being locked out of the job market. And we do not even know the details about the coverage.

These are the types of questions that deserve to be answered, and they should not be treated disrespectfully, through the way that they are being managed right now—with all due respect to the minister.

See this speech in context