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

Absolutely—very agile, Member for Hunter. The government's other signature program, Work for the Dole, is failing badly. This program is absolutely tanking. Three months after being in that program, only 11 per cent of the people who go through the program get a job. That means nearly 90 per cent of the people who go through Work for the Dole do not get a job three months after they have done it. What is the point of the program? Let's go to the Secretary of the Department of Employment. When asked, 'What do you think about Work for the Dole?' she said:

The purpose of Work for the Dole is not necessarily to lead directly to a full-time job.

That is the Secretary of the Department of Employment saying Work for the Dole is not about getting a job. This is why youth unemployment is a problem. Right throughout the government, they have no answer as to where they will actually deliver on youth unemployment.

Talking about Work for the Dole, we learnt of the terrible, tragic fatality of a young person on a Work for the Dole site earlier this year. The government have undertaken an internal review and they still have not released the findings of that review. When are they going to step forward and say what changes have been made to give assurances to the rest of the country that anywhere this program is operating people will be safe? We have had no answer, but what we do know is that they are getting ready to move to a new program, called PaTH, which is designed to be an interns program, where they are basically going to pump 120,000 interns into the job market. And do not think they will be interns in the normal sense of the word; these will be intern waiters, intern baristas and intern construction workers.

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