Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the first Minister for Employment and Youth Affairs was appointed by the Fraser Government in 1978;

(b) subsequent Labor and Coalition Australian Governments have appointed Ministers with a portfolio concerned with youth, and the Howard Government had three different Ministers who held the youth affairs portfolio;

(c) in 2013 the Abbott Government abolished the youth portfolio;

(d) in May 2014, the Government advised it was planning a 'focused and targeted approach' to consult with young people, yet this year is likely to have the last National Youth Week with no funding in the forward estimates;

(e) the Deloitte 2017 Millennial Survey suggests that young people struggle to engage with major political parties—not having a Youth Minister acts as a clear signal that engagement with young people is not a priority for this Government; and

(f) Australia's youth unemployment and underemployment are an increasingly systemic concern, with the current youth unemployment rate sitting at 13.3 per cent and the youth underemployment rate sitting at 18.3 per cent; and

(2) calls on the Government to appoint a Minister for Young People, sitting within the Cabinet, having a particular focus on youth engagement, youth employment and transition to work.

The purpose of this motion is very clear: we have, according to 2011 ABS statistics, 2.86 million young people aged 15 to 24. Those young people are not represented by this government, and they should be. And so I call on the Prime Minister, who has absolute discretion on the portfolios in his cabinet, to ensure that young people are represented in cabinet through the appointment of a minister for young people.

For nearly four decades, we have had a minister for youth in this parliament. In 1978, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser appointed a minister for youth—the actual title was Minister for Employment and Youth Affairs, and I am sure the decision of the then Prime Minister was in part due to the youth unemployment rate rising in the late 1970s. Now we have a youth unemployment rate that is higher than during the global financial crisis. Nationally, youth unemployment sits at 13.5 per cent and, in regional areas, we know it is much higher.

If the first experience a young person has when leaving education is waiting on the unemployment queue, then we, as a nation, have failed them. According to Brotherhood St Laurence Australia's youth unemployment hotspots report, which was published in March 2016, youth unemployment in outback Queensland was a staggering 28.4 per cent; in Cairns, 20.5 per cent; in Tasmania's south-east, 19.6 per cent; and, in my electorate in the Adelaide Hills, it was 16.2 per cent—an increase of more 6.9 per cent in just one year. And there is no evidence to suggest this has reduced.

These figures do not consider underemployment. Today, Brotherhood of St Laurence released Generation Stalled, which stated that the youth underemployment rate is now 18 per cent—the highest it has been since records began. What this means is that more young people now than at any other time in the last 40 years—even during the GFC, even during the 1990s recession—are looking for extra hours of work and they are not getting those hours. Generation Stalled is an apt title, but I think it should be 'Generation: We Failed'.

Not only are we failing young people in relation to employment opportunities; we are failing them in parliamentary representation. We are failing them in housing affordability. The likelihood of a young person ever experiencing the security of owning a home is diminishing day by day. The Treasurer's response is: get a good job. The Prime Minister's response is: have rich parents to stump up a deposit.

These comments show a government that has no idea and no connection to young people, and how difficult it is to transition from stable employment to home ownership. They have no grasp on the reality that the biggest homeless group is actually young people—42 per cent of homeless people are under 25 years of age—and that the face of homelessness is a young woman. Young women are overrepresented at youth homeless services.

In 2013, the then Abbott-led coalition abolished the youth portfolio. Since that time, we have seen attack after attack on young people. We have seen a call for university deregulation that would see university become something just for the privileged. Let's not forget: many people in this parliament enjoyed a free university degree. That seems to be forgotten in current policy.

In the 2014 budget, we saw a policy that would have seen young people seeking work put on a six-months-on six-months-off youth allowance. What on earth were they thinking? In the same budget, National Youth Week was stripped of funding, and this Friday marks the end of funding, as we know it, for National Youth Week; there is nothing in the forward estimates. The Australian Youth Affairs Coalition was defunded, effectively, ensuring that young people had no advocacy platform. I would argue that, if there had been an effective minister for youth at the time of the 2014 budget, we would not have had these harsh measures.

More recently, the omnibus bill concocted a four-week wait period for young people applying for assistance; that, in some way, young people would be able to magically find a job living on sunshine and fresh air. The government has no regard for the facts, even the basic fact, that it costs money to look for work. I am very pleased that my team refused to agree to the four-week wait period and refused to agree to increasing the age for youth allowance.

As a nation, we are not considering the needs of young people. For the next generation to be employed, we need full employment to ensure that our rapidly ageing population is managed, and managed well, in retirement. To not have a dedicated minister for young people in this parliament is an opportunity lost. And so I implore our Prime Minister: be future thinking, be agile, be different to your predecessor and appoint a minister for young people.

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