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

In response to the member for Lalor's interjection, it will be a shame if this program fails as well and falls in a heap and we have to come back here and address those failures. In its submission, the ACTU said the United Kingdom tried a similar scheme, the Youth Employment Scheme, YES, in 2013. This scheme was launched in January 2013 and was wound up in July 2014, with fewer than half the estimated placements having been made and no clear increase in real job placements. The YES scheme, like the Youth Jobs Path program, had a top-up element for the participant, a subsidy for the employer—tick, tick; both of these things are available under the proposed program—a shorter work experience component and a longer skills development component.

That scheme tanked, so the question to the government is: if we look at overseas models, can you give assurances to the House that the model being proposed here and that is supported by this bill will actually be successful? This is a $752 million program, Minister. There is $5.7 million allocated to it in this bill. Where is the rest? Has the $5.7 million taken into account the 'cycling through'—as the member for Longman referred to it—of people? We do not know that.

The member for Longman mentioned the possibility of this cycling through. We are genuinely concerned that in some major businesses you will get a big group of these interns being brought in who will, just coincidentally, be put on weekends where penalty rates would not apply to them because they are already getting their payment. But the people who were earning those penalty rates would suddenly find that they did not have to come in for that shift. That is a big issue for people in those positions. The biggest champions of this type of program have been within the hospitality sector. They have never engaged in the jobactive program. Big businesses have never taken up those jobactive jobseekers. It has been small and medium enterprises who have done so. But we find that the ones that are quoted by those opposite when they are talking about the program are these big champions: the Business Council of Australia and AiG. Of course they would champion it. The concern is that the smaller businesses that have done the great thing by the country and have taken on more and more jobactive participants will not be the ones that are prioritised under this program. That is an issue.

We are watching this program closely. We are very concerned that people will be ripped off, that the program will fail and that it will be young people who will be forced to carry the cost, not this government, for a thought bubble announced in a budget leading into a hastily called election. Minister, there are deep concerns about this program and what it will actually achieve.

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