Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

(   We're in the middle of a recession. If you are under the age of 30, this is going to be the first recession in your lifetime. You probably have to be over the age of 45 to have a living memory of the last recession, so for many members of this place the concept of a recession is an academic one. It's not one they can personally remember; it's not one they've lived through. I'm not one of those people.

I left school in 1983. That was the height of the second-last great downturn. I don't need to be lectured by anyone on the impact of a recession on young people and young people's life opportunities. I fully remember the young men that I went to school with. I remember their capacity as they made their way through year 9, year 10, year 11 and year 12, and I remember the discussion that would go on in the schoolyard about what they were going to do when they left school. If their dad or their brother worked in the mines, they wanted to go and work in the mines. If their dad worked in the steelworks, they were going to go and work in the steelworks. If their dad was a chippie or a sparky or working in building and construction, they had hopes and aspirations of following their father or their brother or their uncle into one of those trades. But the recession of 1982-83 ended all of those hopes and aspirations. In one 12-month period, the steelworks, then the largest employer in town, went from a workplace of 23,000 employees—engaging all of the ready, willing and able young boys and, in later years, girls of a generation into an apprenticeship or a traineeship—down to 13,000 employees. The downturn, the recession, had hit, and it hit the hopes and aspirations of all of those young boys. I talk about young boys because they're the ones that I grew up with, they're the ones I went through school with.

So many of those young boys had lots of talent and ability, but their view of the world—the world that they knew—meant leaving school in year 10, 11 or 12 and following their dad, their uncle, their brothers and their mates into a trade or into employment in one of those places. When that was smashed, their capacity to envisage a different world, a different pathway, went with it. It wasn't that they lacked ability. It wasn't that they lacked aspiration in their lives. But the traditional pathway from school to work was no longer there. I keep in contact with all of the guys that I went to school with, not as much today as we did in the years immediately after. I see lots of guys who, but for the lottery of the year they left school, would have gone on to much different lives, having much different—dare I say better—outcomes in life than the ones they have. Two years earlier, they'd have been well into their apprenticeship. Two years later, the economy had started to recover and the support the government had put in place had started to kick in. But, for that group, their life course was irrevocably altered because of the lottery of the year that they left school.

So I don't need to be lectured by anyone in this place about what it means to be a young person attempting to enter the workforce in the middle of a recession. It was the story of my generation. That's why we come to this debate focusing not on what is in the bill and what the bill seeks to do to assist young people—of course we support that. Of course we support government doing everything it can to ensure that we smooth that pathway, for young men and women, from school into employment so that they don't hit that dead zone of having months, if not years, of no training or employment and not engaging with the workforce. Of course we support that and of course we will do everything we can to support the government not only to pass this bill but to improve it. We want to ensure that the manifest shortcomings within the legislation itself are remedied so that, when it passes through the other place, hopefully at the end of this week, it does a better job of assisting that generation of young men and women leaving school. Of course we want to support them.

It's not so much about what's in the bill but about what's not in the bill. And, if you truly are a government which is attempting to bring the country together, you wouldn't, through one piece of legislation, set up a dynamic that literally does the opposite. It sets up a dynamic where we have one group of potential workers pitted against another group of potential workers, one of which is going to be significantly disadvantaged, because the government will be saying to one group, 'Here's a subsidy,' and to the other group, 'You're on your own.' Now, maybe we wouldn't be so concerned about this if those workers over the age of 35 were a small and insignificant group. But they're not. They're not. As of today, there are 928,000 workers over the age of 35 on unemployment benefits, seeking work or more work. These are the workers whom we would disadvantage by the very measures that the government is putting in place to attempt to assist workers to get into the workplace. So it's not about what's in the bill; it's about what's not in the bill.

I want to say something else. This Prime Minister is incredibly keen to convince the Australian population that history started in March 2020—that nothing that happened before March 2020 is relevant. It all started from March 2020. Now, he didn't have a good Christmas. We acknowledge the fact that he did not have a good Christmas, and, if it were just that, we might be more focused on the measures that are coming through the parliament. But it's not just that. This Prime Minister—and this government—has an absolutely appalling record when it comes to apprentices and assisting young people into trades. In the six years that the coalition has been in power, we have lost apprentices at the rate of 60 a day—60 a day—with total apprentice numbers plummeting from 403,000 in 2013 to 272,000 in 2019. The Prime Minister is always keen to claim credit for the good news and find a scapegoat for the bad news. On this one, he need look no further than the mirror, because it is on his watch that we've seen a devastation of the institutions that were put together over decades to support young people into trades, into vocational education and into work. I'm talking, of course, about the cuts to vocational education and training. The Prime Minister wants to convince Australians that history started in March this year and that nothing he did on vocational education and training or youth employment matters before then. That's because of the devastating assessment that has been visited upon his government and his decisions for everything that led up to March 2020.

In late 2019, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research showed that the Morrison government funding cuts were equivalent to almost 11 per cent of total federal funding in the vocational education and training sector. In that year alone, $325 million was slashed from vocational education and training—in particular, from TAFE. It did not stand alone in that. Also in that year alone, $3.9 billion was slashed from the vocational education and training Education Investment Fund. So, when you put it all together, you see it approaching $6 billion that's cut, underspent and slashed from training opportunities and from training facilities. Is it any wonder that we have lost apprentices at the rate of 60 a day under this government's watch? I can understand why the government wants to try and convince people that history started in March this year. I can understand why the government bristles when we say, 'This is the Morrison government's recession.' The simple fact of the matter is this: Australia is less resilient, Australia is less able and Australia is less capable of employing, training and facilitating more apprentices, more traineeships and more young people, smoothing the path from school to the workforce, because of the very decisions of this government. Is it any wonder that it is young people who have been most vulnerable to losing their jobs over the recession of the last six months? It's because of the very decisions the Morrison government has taken.

I want to give a shout out to those older workers as well. If you are a worker in your late 50s or early 60s and you have lost your job in the last nine months, there is a sense of desperation. There is a sense that you, like so many before you, have been thrown on the scrap heap. It is the role of government to reach out to these people, in some of the most desperate times of their lives, and say: 'We are not going to leave you on the scrap heap. We are going to assist you back into the workforce, because we believe in you'. You'd think a government that was going to do that might start in its own backyard, and yet they have done the very opposite.

Over 14,000 public sector workers were slashed, cut, axed or removed from their jobs over this government's time in office. The vast majority of these workers weren't in their mid-20s. They weren't in their mid-30s. They weren't even in their mid-40s. The vast majority of these workers were in their mid to late 50s and early 60s. They were thrown on the scrap heap by this government, which says all the right things but does the very opposite.

We've actually seen it happen in the last few months, when the ABC slashed hundreds of workers from its workforce as a result of direct decisions of this government. The vast majority of these workers were older workers as well. The government says one thing but actually does the opposite. It's trying to convince us that history started in March this year, but we know it's very different. I don't need a lecture from this government on what it's like to leave school in the middle of a recession; I've lived through it. I don't need a lecture from this government on the fact that we need to do more for younger people. What I want to see from this government is a commitment to those older workers as well. It's about bringing the country together, not leaving people behind.

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