Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Right now, young people are getting screwed. Year after year, successive Labor and Liberal governments have been making life harder for young people. They have managed the economy in the interests of the few, instead of in the interests of everyone. And it is getting harder and harder for young people to get a job, as youth unemployment is high, and it has doubled over the general unemployment rate. The jobs that young people often do get are very highly insecure and often not well paid at all.

Study is getting less and less affordable, because university and TAFE are getting more expensive. The dream of owning your own home is getting further and further out of reach, with Australian house prices skyrocketing and incomes stagnant. Yet the government is not doing anything about this. In fact, if the government has its way the problem for young people will get much, much worse. If right now young people are getting screwed, if the government gets its plans through they will be right royally stuffed.

Let's have a look at the current situation. Youth unemployment is at nearly 13 per cent. That is more than double the general national rate. An Anglicare report that was recently released found that only one job is advertised for every six low-skilled jobseekers, who are often young people who have not had the opportunity to gain much work experience. Getting a job can be even harder for people living in a regional area or for people from non-English speaking backgrounds. Young people in Melbourne have told me that if they put 'Mohammed' in their CV and they send off their job application, they hear nothing; but when they change their name to 'David', the phone starts ringing.

And increasingly there are fewer entry level jobs available for young people, making it harder for young people to get their foot in the door, to build their skills and experience, to establish a career, to gain independence, and to plan and progress their lives. The youth unemployment rate is always higher than the general unemployment rate, and in some respects that makes sense; young people are, as a whole, doing other things, whereas older people tend to be more likely to look for work.

What we also know, as a general historical trend, is that every time there is an economic downturn, we strike hard times or there is a recession young people are hardest hit first. The lines of the youth unemployment rate and the general unemployment rate diverge when we reach hard times, and it becomes proportionately harder for young people to find work. The youth unemployment rate for them skyrockets. What we have also found historically over Australia's history is that those two lines, after a year or so, tend to converge again and it becomes easier for young people to find work. Since the GFC that has not happened in Australia. For young people the line has stayed higher. Since the GFC it has become harder proportionately than at any other time in history for young people to get back into work. The entry-level jobs since the GFC are disappearing. Those jobs that you might walk into straight out of school or that you might walk into if you do not finish school are disappearing. The jobs that this government wants young people to get just are not being created any more in the way that they used to, and it is a national crisis.

So what is this government's response? Rather than listening to expert advice on how to tackle youth unemployment or invest in new industries that might create those jobs for the future, the Liberals have taken it upon themselves to be every young Australian's tough parent, serving up some tough love by telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and earn or learn. Their first plan was to kick young people off Newstart, which is itself so low that it is below the poverty line and is a barrier to people finding work, because you do not have that money to invest in yourself—to get some training, to buy the new clothes for the job interview, to even get a haircut. Their first plan was to kick people off Newstart and make them wait six weeks before they can receive this measly payment to try and support themselves. Luckily, the Senate took a stand for young people and refused to pass this ridiculous measure. Yet, the Liberals are refusing to listen, saying they only want to make young people wait four weeks before they can get Newstart. Well, four weeks—the landlord does not care that you do not have money coming from the government to pay the rent, the public transport does not care that you do not have money because it is the government's fault. But the government's approach is still to say, 'Well, we'll deal with the national youth unemployment crisis by making life tougher for young people.'

At the same time the government wants to make learning more expensive, less accessible and more exclusive by cutting support for students and deregulating our universities—a move that experts have warned could see the creation of US-style $100,000 degrees. So it is harder to earn by getting a job because, under this government and since the GFC, the jobs are not there in the same way, it is more expensive to try and learn, and even if you are lucky enough to get a job and to keep it and to earn an income, owning your home is becoming a pipedream.

In 1990 house prices were approximately six times a young person's income. In 2013 that had doubled to approximately 12 times a young person's income. It is not the fault of smashed avocados that housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable for people. Even if you find a job and even if you find a secure job—which is pretty tough to do these days—the ratio of your income to house prices is just skyrocketing. And that has happened under the watch of Liberal and Labor. The old parties' policies of allowing negative gearing to happen and the capital gains tax discount to continue turned housing into an unproductive investment class, and it caused an explosion in house prices, meaning that overwhelmingly the only people who could afford to buy a house are those who already have one.

The government should be making it easier for people to buy their first home not helping people who already have one to buy their second, third or fourth. The Grattan Institute found that under these and other government policies real wealth held by older households from 2003 through to 2012 grew by $215,000, but for younger households it went backwards. In 1994 young households had nearly 10 percent of the country's wealth, but by 2014 that had effectively halved to 5.5 per cent. So over 20 years young people went from having 10 per cent of the country's wealth to having about five per cent. At the same time it dramatically increased for older generations. This is why young people are getting screwed: successive governments have worked against them, dealing them an increasingly bad hand and growing intergenerational inequality. Governments have allowed the economy to run rampant and to screw young people.

The good news is that as a society we are becoming more and more aware of just how much young people are getting screwed. Academics, think tanks and civil society organisations are all pointing out how the odds are no longer in young people's favour and how, under Liberal and Labor, we may be creating a situation where we are leaving the economy and household budgets and the planet worse off for generations that come after us rather than better. But the bad news is that the government are refusing to look at the bigger picture and are refusing to listen. They are being the unreasonable parent instead of listening to their children or experts, having blind faith that they know what is best—that is, to make people work for either nothing or next to nothing. If it were a lesson on safe sex, this is a government that would be pushing abstinence not condoms. If it were a lesson on good behaviour, this is a government that would be sending young people to their rooms rather than talking the issue through.

Instead of working systematically to even the odds and deliver a better deal for young people, on budget night this year the Liberals unveiled their master plan for getting young people a job—this Prepare, Trial, Hire scheme. What it really meant, though, was that earn or learn became burn and churn. Essentially, this government's plan to tackle high youth unemployment and help young people get a job is to lure them to work for below the minimum wage. The Liberals' plan will not provide secure and meaningful work for the hundreds of thousands of young people who are unemployed. What will do is drive down wages for other workers and see employers burn and churn through young people. In fact, it could see people currently working in these roles kicked out in favour of free money and labour, courtesy of the government. Under the program being enabled by this bill, by not having to hire someone at the usual wage employers could bank more per week than the young people who are supposedly going to get a job. In other words, this scheme will allow employers, on the public purse, to take home more money than the young people who are going to be forced to work under it. The Greens do not accept that to get young people into work they need to be paid as little as $4 an hour, which is well below the minimum wage. That is what this scheme is about.

Following the government's unveiling of this flagship program, the Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions said 'this internship program is a path to nowhere' and 'gives business access to free, exploitable workers'. He asked:

Why would a business employ a minimum wage or lower paid worker when the government is ready to supply them with free labour and a $1000 handout?

He pointed out that these internships could include low-skilled work such as work in supermarkets, which is not a plan to create real, lasting jobs. It is simply substituting existing low-paid labour with even cheaper, government subsidised labour rather than creating new jobs.

Let us be clear about this: internships, if they are structured correctly, can be a good thing. They can provide opportunities for young people to learn and build their skills. We have had internships for a very long time. Every political party in this place, I am sure, offers internships. Community groups offer internships. Organisations like community groups and political parties thrive on getting young people involved, but when we do it—and I speak here on behalf of the Greens—we do not offer out hope to people that this is some pathway to secure employment; it is about you and increasing your skills. You are not here doing government subsidised work where you are required to turn up at a particular time and clock off at a particular time. It is not a false job—because that is not what an internship is or should be. But when you ask people, as the government is doing under this program, to clock on and clock off and get the equivalent of $4 an hour while they hold out hope of a secure job, and you pay employers $1,000 from the public purse to put them on and displace other workers, that is not a scheme to create lasting employment.

The simple fact is this: this is a flawed plan dreamt up in isolation by a government that thinks it knows best, but it will not help people find secure long-term work. In fact, it could just see handouts to business to force young people to work for below the minimum wage and potentially force people from a job who are currently working in these roles. There is nothing in this bill that provides protection for someone currently working in a low-paid job from being forced out of that job by this new scheme so that government subsidised cheap labour can come in instead.

We have to take action to help make life easier for young people. That means tackling rising job insecurity and tackling housing unaffordability, but this program will not do that. If we were serious, we would be investing in education. We would be investing in big job-creating projects that will provide secure work for young people—like public transport and clean energy. We would be making it easier for people to get into education and complete it and we would end the unfair tax breaks that are pushing up the cost of housing and pricing young people out of the market. And we have to do it now because otherwise we run the risk of locking an entire generation out of secure work and locking an entire generation out of owning their own home.

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