Ben Morton (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to start by congratulating the member for Mayo for bringing this important issue to the House. It gives us an opportunity to think about the contribution that young people can make in some of the important points that she raised in her particular motion. I grew up on the New South Wales Central Coast and it is good to also see the local member for Dobell here today, the local member for that region. It is an area where there was no shortage of young people with ability, but there was a shortage of young people able to realise that through the application of their effort they could reach their full potential. One of the things that I said in my maiden speech was that I wanted to dedicate my service to this House to ensuring that young people knew that their future is determined by them, by their application of their effort; that everyone has a potential and that they can reach it through their application of their own effort.

Young people aged in their 30s have to struggle quite a bit and have to prove themselves more often than not. Young people have to work harder. There is ageism in our society. We hear a lot about elderly people, but we do not hear about the struggles of young people in relation to having to prove themselves. There are many young people who have achieved a lot, but their achievements are something they have had to apply their effort to even more because, on face value, people assume that just because they are young they are unable to achieve something. This happened to me when I first applied to be the state director of the WA Liberal Party. I was aged 25. I did not put my age on my application to become the state director of the WA Liberal Party, but what I put on my application was the experience I had professionally. When the then state president found out that I was only 25, there was a bit of an uproar in relation to me omitting those details from my CV, but I thought that by putting my age on my CV I would be distracting from the experience I was able to bring to the role of state director—a role that I held for a long time and a role that I really enjoyed.

One of the things in this motion is the issue of youth employment. Mr Deputy Speaker Hastie, this is an issue that is very close to your heart as the member for Canning. As I said, we want to be able to have a society where people can apply their own effort to succeed. There is a particular bill before this parliament in relation to PATH. It is a bill that will give young people the opportunity to apply their effort, show their full potential, be given the opportunity to work in a business and be incentivised by a $200 a fortnight payment in addition to their welfare so they can get the opportunity to experience what it is like to participate as an employee in a business. This bill is before the Senate at the moment and I would encourage all members to ensure that this bill does pass the Senate. It is very important. I have had the opportunity to give young people are start in a business. There are some arguments from the other side of the chamber that this does not guarantee a job. As a previous employer, I would not take someone on if I were required to absolutely give them a job, but I would take someone on to give them a chance. I would take them on and would allow them to apply their effort to be able to succeed. Yet this bill is still in the Senate and, in my view, should come out of there very quickly and be passed so we can incentivise both businesses and young people to apply their effort to succeed.

The issue of engagement in politics is also important in this motion. I said a lot about social media when I was leaving the role of state director of the WA Liberal Party. It is making our world smaller, not bigger. You are able to use social media to engage on the things that interest you to the exclusion of all others. I fear that, unless we proactively engage with young people in our society, they will continue to move further and further away from our political debates, so it is timely that we think about how we need to engage with young people in our society. The example that I use is that, if a young person is interested in skateboarding, they can know the results of a skateboarding competition in New York before they know about a very important policy or incident that has occurred in their town or in their community.

All of our ministers are dedicated to doing the very best by young people. There have been suggestions about youth councils and national youth forums. I encourage the parliament to think about the ways in which young people can have direct access to the parliament and have their say. I commend the member for Mayo for bringing this very important issue to this chamber.

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