Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendment by the member for Chifley and to discuss this program that has been put forward by the government in the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Youth Jobs Path: Prepare, Trial, Hire) Bill 2016. It seems to me that this is a creative concoction. They have come up with the word 'PaTH' for a path, supposedly, to somewhere, and then they have thought, 'Prepare, Trial, Hire'. It is a clever little idea. There is only one problem: we have all seen The Pursuit of Happyness. We saw the film. We saw Will Smith being homeless while he worked for nothing with his young child with him. We have seen the film. We know that the glorified internship is a very, very sexy word that people use for unpaid work, unless there is a quid pro quo in terms of some kind of an accreditation.

An internship in this country is not tightly defined. We do, however, use the word to describe what RMIT students might do as part of their practical placement for which they are given accreditation in their postgrad study. ANU runs similar programs. There is a quid pro quo here. The young person attends a workplace in a learning environment to do a work placement. We even use that language of 'work placement' in high school with VET programs. There is always a quid pro quo.

The problem with this plan is that it is called an internship, but there is no quid pro quo. The notion here is that we are just going to roll out a policy so that we can pay kids $100 a week on top of what they get for Newstart and they will actually be working. Or are they working? This is the least thought-out piece of legislation from those opposite to come into this place in 3½ years, and it is the worst. Worse than that, it is packaged like it is some kind of panacea for youth unemployment. There is no panacea for youth unemployment. There is no quick fix and there is no easy fix. We have tried these things before and they have been dropped. Why? Because they were not successful.

As a young person, when I first left school at 16 I was part of a program that came out of what we now call Centrelink, which used to be something very different. We were put into positions that were three-month trials where the government subsidised the employer to put those young people into those jobs. I was in a job for 12 months and I watched four other young people come and go in three-month blocks and get no ongoing employment. In our era, I talked to lots of young people who were just going from three-month position to three-month position to three-month position. What we did was subsidise business. What we did not do was find long-term jobs for young people.

This is just another iteration of that, although this time it is dressed up as if it is more important. This is not about putting someone into a low-paid entry-level job where they may not even require a school finishing certificate or year 12 qualification. This is being dressed up like it is some kind of postgrad experience. It is not. This is about exploiting young people and finding yet another way to subsidise business. If they cannot get their $50 billion tax cuts through, I suppose this was the next best thing. They are going to subsidise business and wrap it up like it is going to address youth unemployment. It is not.

As we saw in The Pursuit of Happyness, the American version of an internship is unpaid postgrad work. That movie blew apart any notion that internships are necessarily a way to get to work. Mr Deputy Speaker, if you remember Will Smith in that movie—I certainly do—you will remember him sleeping in a public toilet with his son. If you remember, that model that the movie exposed was where American companies—I think it was a law firm or an accountancy firm—would put on 10 interns who would do unpaid work and would ultimately vie for one paid position. It was not funny. The movie was incredibly sad, and so is this proposal which came down on budget night. The minister responsible, when asked, 'Is this about new jobs or existing jobs?' said, 'It's about existing jobs.' It is about existing jobs, so it is about reducing the wages of young people as they enter employment—well, quasi-employment or possible employment. Perhaps one in 1,000 will get a job out of this program. I have found this entire idea to be completely and utterly fanciful. It is absolutely fanciful.

There are so many other questions that come from it. Will they get a payslip? It is illegal in this country not to give a worker a payslip. Where in the provisions in here does it explain exactly what role these kids are going to play in these jobs? Are they going to be paid by the hour? Is that the plan for this loose $100 on top of their Newstart? Is the $100 if you show up or is it $100 if you work 15 hours? Does anyone want to quickly do the maths on how much an hour this worker is going to cost the company? It is not like we pay young people an extraordinary amount now.

There are real risks in this. As someone who spent her life working with young people, I know what those risks are. As someone who spent her life with young people who went and got that part-time job after school, we applaud them and we love it. At 14 and nine months in Victoria, off they go out the door to get that part-time job. But when they are doing year 12 and they turn 18, halfway through the year they come to see you, heartbroken because they are no longer in that part-time job. They are too old and they cost too much on an 18-year-old's salary, so they have been replaced by a year 9 student. This will be open to absolute exploitation and abuse, and this government should be ashamed to put it forward as a serious idea.

This government wants to address youth unemployment. If they actually want to do something serious for the 260,000 young people in this country that are currently looking for work then perhaps they need to address the way we build infrastructure. Perhaps we could take the advice of the economists around the country and get started on some of those things.

I note, too, today that we are talking about a situation where the ABCC bill, which is being put to the Senate, actively discourages large companies from putting on apprentices. So, we will discourage apprenticeships and we will introduce internships—vaguely wrapped internships—in this path-to-nowhere program. Let's look at the notion of internships in this country. We have people doing internships and, as I said, the general view of those internships is that they are part of some kind of university qualification as a workplace placement and, in that sense, they are not necessarily a bad thing. But this legislation is a case of extrapolating from what the community perceives to be a good thing: you are going to a university that is going to give you not just an academic training but also the practical work component that is going to help you become more career ready. Note: we are talking about internships in this country that are generally about building a career; it is an entry level into a career. However, we have now got this down to youth unemployment—youths of 17 to 24 years of age. I do not think they are going to build a career from working for 12 weeks for what is ostensibly $100 a week, on top of the government's Newstart allowance. So it is a subsidy for business. It is not about youth unemployment and it is not about preparing kids for work.

While I am here, I cannot ignore this notion—and I hear it in this place all the time—of how young people need to be in a program to develop soft work skills. What on earth are soft work skills? Tying your tie? Getting out of bed on time? As someone who has raised three sons, I have watched them all go out to work at very early hours of the morning at young ages. Every young person has to go through that process. We do not spit them out of school, put them in a truck, take them to a job site and say, 'They're ready.' Part of that development is about the relationship between the employer and the young person. When young people go through those first months of getting up and getting ready for work they sometimes stumble. It takes them a little while sometimes to figure out that they actually need to go to bed before 10 pm if they have to be up at 5.30 am. You cannot teach that as part of a program on soft skills. Our employers are not screaming out for young people to have soft skills. Our employers are asking for students who have the skills to work in a collaborative team. They are asking for literacy and numeracy. Most employers know that the soft skills of being polite to people and saying good morning when you get to work will have been learnt at home and that most of those things are about work culture. Work will teach them. They will develop those skills when they are at work.

So we have this notion that we are going to subsidise companies to teach soft skills in an internship that is about entry level work for young people. Let's face it, if this legislation comes into being then this internship is going to be about supermarkets. This is going to be about fast food outlets. This is going to be about 7-Eleven not having to break the law anymore, because it will be legal for them to do what they have already been doing. In fact, they will be further subsidised to do exactly what they have been doing, and they will be able to do it without having breached a visa regulation in the process because they will be doing it to young Australian people. This is a road to nowhere. It is a path to nowhere. In fact, it is nowhere for a young person. We know where this path will lead to in terms of work conditions and wages in this country. It will drive down wages. It will drive down conditions. They are my other questions: does this young person get a pay slip? Is this young person going to be on work experience, or are they considered to be an employee? Are they going to be covered by WorkCover? Are they going to be covered by the Fair Work Act? Will they have to provide their own equipment? Will they be expected to show up with hard shoes on on the first day of job? Will they have to pay for their uniform?

This legislation is an absolute thought-bubble from this government. They have not given any consideration to how they might tackle youth unemployment, except to find a way to drive down young people's wages and to drive down work conditions in this country. My last big question is: does the bill specify when these hours of work will occur? Will they be from 8 pm until three in the morning for a job of picking up glasses at a nightclub? Is that the job young people are going to be doing for their Newstart allowance, plus $100? Are there going to be limits on how far from home they can be asked to travel before they are cut off Newstart, because they did not attend the nonworkplace for the noninternship to get their nontraining?

This government should come into this place and treat it with some respect. They should approach the creation of legislation that is supposedly about getting young people into work seriously. If they cannot approach it seriously then they should sit down and watch some American films, because I am sure that if they had seen The Pursuit of Happyness this bill would never have come into this chamber. Will Smith did a terrific job in that film, showing us all what Americanisation looks like. If we want to have internships in this country then can we have it so that there is a clear advantage for young people to be engaged in them and it not be an opportunity for potential exploitation?

I am going to finish with a quote from Clara Ivy Baird—a good friend of mine. She has worked in this building and now works for Interns Australia. She says:

There are countless interns who have gained real life benefits from their internships. Unfortunately, however, the opposite is also true: desperate to pick up work, too many young Australians are being lured in by an 'internship', and then used to pick up dry cleaning, make coffee and fill out data entry, often without being paid at all.

That is the real experience of a young person who is dealing with other young people. The people she is mostly talking about have a university degree. They are not 17-year-olds straight out of school, ripe for exploitation by this government and its cronies.

See this speech in context