Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On several occasions in parliament I have taken the opportunity to raise the issue of youth unemployment and what can be done in a practical way to address the matter and specifically how, in our region of the Illawarra, we can encourage local employers to provide our young people with apprenticeship opportunities.

For the past several years I have chaired a local Illawarra apprenticeship committee which has been able to shine a light on our local challenges. Our research showed that many small to medium sized businesses found the financial cost of taking on a young person prohibitive in the first couple of years when they were still learning their trade. We have been able through the project to get the support of the state government in arranging pre-apprenticeship courses through our local TAFE colleges. In this way, employers who took on a young person at the completion of this course were employing the equivalent of a first year trained apprentice. We have been successful in placing over 400 young people through this innovative project.

The former federal government funded the apprenticeship coordinator position currently held by Ian Nicholls and auspiced by our local Illawarra Business Chamber. The recent federal government decision to provide an enhanced Apprentice Kickstart Bonus was the impetus for my approach to the editor of our local newspaper, the Illawarra Mercury, to see what assistance the Mercury could provide in publicising this important initiative. This resulted in our committee, in conjunction with our local paper, the Mercury, running a joint local campaign since 19 December last year under the banner ‘Project Kickstart’. An editorial on that day explained the features of the campaign:

Our aim, in concert with the Government, is to find places for 500 apprentices before March next year. Project Kickstart is extraordinarily ambitious, yet it goes to the heart of one of the greatest challenges the Illawarra faces.

With unemployment dancing around 10 per cent we are by definition a disadvantaged region. But on closer examination the jobless numbers reveal a much more horrendous rate of 30 per cent for those people up to the age of 19 searching for work. Combined with a relatively low school retention rate, a clear picture emerges of where this community needs to be giving serious focus.

For weeks after the launch of the campaign, the Mercury ran stories of local young people looking for an apprenticeship—people like Michael Brajkovic, Dale Baker, Dimitar Klimoski, Benjamin Coulstock, Logan Hartley—and several stories of committed employers, like Geoff Bailey from Jamberoo Native Nursery, who were keen to take on a young person. This culminated in a front-page story featuring a local young person, Tim Bonanno, who was employed as an apprentice by Matt Cahill from Wollongong Collision Repairs.

Under the banner headline ‘Our campaign: give a kid a go’ the Mercury ran a special edition of their regular supplement My Career on Wednesday, 20 January. It featured the portraits of about 120 young people and a short statement from them indicating their reasons for wanting an apprenticeship and the areas that they were interested in. In the words of the editor: ‘We appeal to the region’s businesses to make a real difference to the lives of these kids. It’s time to give them a go.’

Our committee met last Friday to review the progress of the campaign, and early figures show how successful it has been to date. By mid-January this year, 236 young 15- to 19-year-olds had commenced their apprenticeship. Our TAFE representatives at the meeting reported an increase of up to 30 per cent in some popular apprenticeship courses like bakery and hairdressing. I am confident we are going to reach our target of 500, and hopefully more, by the beginning of March 2010.

I take this opportunity to thank the editor of the Mercury, Stuart Howie, and all the Mercury staff who have been involved in one way or another in this innovative community based campaign. It is a fantastic example of how we can use our local media to address and find solutions to local challenges facing our community. It is certainly the best organised community campaign that I have been involved with in my time as the member for Throsby. It makes you feel good to know you have made a difference in some small way to the life chances of young people in our region—hopefully 500 or more of them by the end of this campaign.