Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The national rate of unemployment for persons between 15 and 19 years of age looking for full-time work was 24.2 per cent as at January 2010. The current rate of youth unemployment in the Fairfield-Liverpool region is 33.5 per cent. These figures are alarmingly high, and it is vital that we as a parliament play our part in encouraging our youth to continue with their education, making them more job ready and, in turn, encouraging our local businesses to reward these efforts with employment. Combating youth unemployment was one of the five initiatives that I nominated as my priorities in taking up the federal seat of Fowler. I have been advised by employers in the region that it is the lack of education and training—and, therefore, adequate skills—of the youth workforce that is the main reason for the lack of employment opportunities for this group.

Education, and high school retention specifically, plays a critical part in improving a young person’s chance of employment. According to the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, the current full-time retention rate for high schools in Western Sydney is 72.6 per cent. I know this statistic can be improved if governments, both state and federal, truly work together with the community. I note that the figure was as low as 69 per cent in 2004, so clearly progress is being made—but we still have a long way to go.

Keeping in mind that a lot needs to be done, I would also like to acknowledge that considerable effort has already gone towards achieving that goal. Last year, the federal government set a target of 90 per cent of young people completing year 12 by the year 2015. This is a realistic and obtainable figure, but obviously it is going to take considerable effort. The Commonwealth is also providing over $200,000 over the next four years so that each education jurisdiction can develop programs designed to encourage students to stay in school and complete year 12 and then be able to undertake further education and training. There is also $47 million as part of the National Career Development Week initiative, which includes individual career development sessions for students, local mentoring programs, improving work experience opportunities and targeting vocational pathways for young people. This also sits comfortably with the government’s position on trade training in schools.

I would like to take a little time to commend some of the local businesses in my area who are very much joining in and doing their part to ensure that young people receive adequate training and employment opportunities. Recently I spoke with Greg Pickering, Group CEO of Mounties Group clubs, one of the largest employers in the south-west of Sydney. This is one of the employers that truly understand the importance of giving young people a chance. In fact, 95 per cent of Mounties staff live within a five-kilometre radius of the club and 35 per cent of them are under the age of 25. This is an example of an employer that takes its community responsibilities seriously in tackling the issue of youth unemployment in our area. Mounties works with local high schools and other educational facilities, such as TAFEs, to provide work experience opportunities, traineeships and apprenticeships to local youth and students. Mounties is also the co-founder of the Street University in Liverpool, which has an on-site cafe that also serves as a training facility for youth in that region. Another example is Harry Hunt OAM, the owner of the Comfort Inn Hunts Liverpool, who spearheaded the Keep Australia Working committee for the south-west of Sydney. He is a man who certainly knows the value of giving young people an opportunity and working with them to provide them with a future.

We must not allow a situation to develop where young people who do not receive adequate training and support today become the long-term unemployed of tomorrow. Tackling this issue now is vital as an investment for our community. Finally, I would like to commend our high-school teachers for their dedication and professionalism, and for doing so much to help local students develop and fulfil their potential.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Fowler on his motion. It raises national issues and it raises issues of local provenance in his own electorate. I similarly want to address both national and local issues in relation to my own electorate and this motion in relation to school retention. As the motion notes, the national rate of unemployment for persons aged 15 to 19 looking for full-time work was 24 per cent in January 2010. This is unacceptable: it is too high; it is a disappointment; it is a failure; and it is something that we have to address. Of course, it is not 24 per cent of the entire population; it is 24 per cent of those who are not in school. We need to recognise that the best thing we can do is firstly to encourage young students to remain at school to complete year 12 and then to give them the best opportunity beyond that. Failing that, we also need to ensure that they have options that are going to assist them into youth employment through a number of different forms of incentives.

I want to speak in particular about the plans for Somerville Secondary College and the plans for a technical stream attached to Somerville Secondary College. First and foremost, the reason why, along with Neale Burgess, the state member for Hastings, so many parents in the community fought so hard for a year 12 Somerville Secondary College stream was precisely to give local students the opportunity to continue on in a supportive environment. Originally there was going to be no school. The state government of the day, the then Bracks government, had ruled it out. But we won that battle to retain the land. Then we won the battle to get the school established as a middle school in conjunction with the nearby Mount Erin Secondary College. Then we won the third battle to have it established as an independent middle school. Late last year I was delighted that, in working with the school council, the school principal and the school community, we were able to convince the Brumby government to match the coalition’s proposal of a year 7 to year 12 independent stand-alone Somerville Secondary College. That has now come to pass. That year 12 stream is now in progress and Somerville Secondary College will be a full year 7 to 12 school. I am delighted with that outcome.

The next step—and this goes directly to the motion before the House today about school retention—is to ensure that there is a second stream of a technical trades college built as part of and attached to Somerville Secondary College. The state government in Victoria allocated $4 million and I am delighted that my close friend and colleague Neale Burgess was able to carry the argument and carry the day to convince the potential premier at the time, Ted Baillieu, and to carry it forward now so that Somerville Secondary College will be accompanied by a technical college component. That is a tremendous outcome for the students of the area.

The area around Somerville is home to some of Australia’s best employers of trade skills such as BlueScope, Inghams and Esso—all of which are large employers and provide huge opportunities for young people with trades training qualifications. To be able to add to the great work being done at Western Port Secondary College with Somerville Secondary College and a Somerville technical college component is a tremendous increase in opportunities for young people on the peninsula. So I commend that element of the motion by the member for Fowler and I particularly endorse the fact that we have won four battles in Somerville and we now have a standalone year 7 to 12 secondary college. The next phase will be the technical college component and that in turn will be followed at Point Nepean by the National Centre for Coasts And Climate. The Mornington Peninsula should be a centre for secondary and tertiary education and we will make it thus. (Time expired)

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to commend the member for Fowler for moving this motion. In an electorate like mine there are pockets of my community that do very well, many people that probably fall into the statistical averages generally but there are also areas of significant disadvantage that appear around the electorate. I spend quite a bit of time at my train stations and on a regular basis I go down to Telopea Station about 6.30 in the morning. It is in the middle of a very interesting area that includes a lot of new housing but also public housing. Most days when I am there this very young girl, who was about four or five when I first saw her, comes down to the station, goes across the train lines at a crossing where you have to wait to make sure a train is not coming, goes across a main road to the shop to buy some milk and then takes it back up to her home. In more recent years she brings her four-year-old brother with her, both in their pyjamas at about a quarter to 7 in the morning. I suspect that she comes from a home that is affected by things that cause her parents not to be up at that time of the morning, but she is clearly a person of great courage and strength. I look at her and I think, ‘This is a person who has got everything in them that they need naturally but probably won’t get the things from us that she needs to do well.’ It is a tragedy really, and poverty is already etched on her face at the age of six, that wariness that you see coming out of disadvantaged areas.

High school retention does not fix everything but it is an indicator of how well we are doing with people who need as much support as we can possibly give them. The increase in retention rates during the Hawke-Keating years, when we managed to increase rates from just over 40 per cent to nearly 72 per cent, was something I was very proud of. I am also proud of our current government’s commitment to improving year 12 or equivalent vocational completion rates to reach our target of 90 per cent in year 12 by 2015. One of the reasons we need to do that is that for the last 12 years of the Howard government in particular there was not the level of improvement we might have expected. In fact, it stagnated around 72 and 74 per cent for some 12 years. By the way, that is long enough for a person to start and finish school, so it is certainly long enough to have more of an impact than two per cent. One of the first things that Prime Minister Howard did when he became Prime Minister was to disband the disadvantaged school program. There was quite an uproar among the education leaders at that time about how that was actually making significant inroads into retention rates. Under the Howard government Australia was the third lowest investor in primary and secondary schooling in the OECD—not a record that any government should be proud of.

We have seen numbers turn around in the last couple of years. They have risen from around 74 to around 78 per cent in the last three years. Already we are starting to see the impact of the Rudd government and Gillard government strategy. We have been tackling the issue in a holistic way. We are well aware that the ability of a child to do well at school is largely dependent on the condition of their learning when they arrive at school in the first place, so we are investing heavily in early childhood education because all the research shows that if a child arrives at school well, they do better at school.

We have invested $723 million over four years towards our national partnership on youth attainment and transitions programs, also to improve retention rates. We have already heard about the trades training schools today in this debate. The new national curriculum is another strategy which will give every child access to world-class curriculum, and the national partnership on low socioeconomic school communities also addresses the complex challenges facing students in disadvantaged communities. Those of us who spend considerable time in our schools would know that our schools quite often, probably in every case, reflect the communities surrounding them, and schools positioned in areas of disadvantage need considerable help. We have also extended the family tax benefit for families who have 16- to 19-year-olds at school or in vocational education, also a significant help to families with teenagers who come from that low socioeconomic band.

Finally I reiterate how pleased I am that the member for Fowler has moved this motion. It is something we should be concentrating on with all our efforts because it is the future of our children. (Time expired)

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with the member for Parramatta in welcoming this motion on education retention rates and youth employment, and I congratulate the member for Fowler for the thoughtful way in which he has addressed this topic. It reflects very much on the member for Fowler. He is one of the true gentlemen of this place and I believe he is very sincere in his desire to help young people to achieve their full potential. He carries on the great tradition of members for Fowler in that regard. One wonders why he is not still the member for Werriwa, but that is one for the internal machinery of the Australian Labor Party.

I address my comments today to the issues of retention rates and to one of the key aspects of the motion of the member for Fowler: working with local businesses to give priority to local youth searching for employment. Education retention rates do provide a direct link to youth employment outcomes. Gippsland has one of the worst year 12 retention rates in Victoria, and subsequently we have a very low participation rate in higher education. Part of the issue is the aspiration amongst our young people and the value placed on education by some of the parents in my community—there is no question about that. We need to address that as a cultural thing in our community. The other big issue in terms of aspiring to higher education is the economic barrier. For kids from regional communities, there is no question that the costs of moving away to achieve higher education are a major barrier. It is why I fought so hard with this government on its changes to youth allowance. Instead of tinkering around the edges we should be having a complete overhaul of the student income support system, and it starts with the tertiary access allowance for all young people who have to move away from home to attend university. The simple fact that it costs country kids more to go to university than it costs city kids is a fundamental injustice we need to address in this place. I urge the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations to take a look at some of the ideas being put forward from not only this side of the House but also some of his own regional colleagues. Regional members understand that situation very clearly.

I am pleased today to see a media release put out by the Victorian government announcing a plan to ensure a long-term future for tertiary education in Gippsland. It comes from my good friend the member for Eastern Victoria Region, Peter Hall, who is a former schoolteacher. It outlines the decision to commission an expert panel to develop this plan for Gippsland. This plan is long overdue. We need to start working with our community to increase that aspiration and to make sure we have the right skills, education and training in place in the Gippsland community to secure a growing and competitive economy. I will not go through all details of the terms of reference now, but it is a process well worth undertaking. I commend the Victorian government for doing this.

The other aspect I will address is the issue of regional employment. The motion of the member for Fowler highlights that the fact that young people, particularly in his own community, have a higher than average unemployment rate. It is a very similar situation to that in my community of Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley. Small businesses are struggling at the moment. I do not believe the economic data is really reflecting that, but the reality on the ground in regional communities is that small- and medium-size businesses across the board are struggling, particularly in the retail and hospitality sectors. There is a real softness there. People are not spending and we are seeing small businesses closing their doors on a regular basis. It is an emerging issue for us in this place to see what support we can put in place for the small business sector as we come to some fairly uncertain times.

As part of my approach to being a member of parliament, I promote the message ‘Putting locals first’. This message is about not only promoting the needs of my local community but encouraging my community to support local businesses wherever possible. It is a fundamental issue for people from regional communities to look after their own small businesses, which look after their communities. These are the small businesses who put money into our sporting club and community groups, who donate goods and who sponsor different activities. We should support them in return. It is a fundamental issue for us in regional communities to put locals first, by supporting local businesses.

On that point, I have an issue with Ministerial and Parliamentary Services at the Department of Finance and Deregulation relating to the opportunity for members of parliament to support local businesses when it comes to office requisites. I have written to the department in relation to this and have followed that up with a letter to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. We are not allowed to support local businesses in our community by purchasing our stationery from local shops. I think that is a fundamental flaw in the procurement process and I will continue to pursue it with the Special Minister of State. I believe that when we are entering government contracts we need to ensure that we give local businesses the chance to tender for every job that is available in regional communities. (Time expired)

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to also commend the member for Fowler for this motion. It is most important that the spotlight be shone on those disadvantaged areas where retention rates at high schools are well below the national average. In the northern part of my electorate, we have high schools that have retention rates of just under 40 per cent, so there are significant problems there. As some of the other speakers have said, this then is reflected in the youth unemployment rates. We have youth unemployment rates hovering between 30 and 40 per cent and they have done so for a considerable amount of time. The two are inextricably linked.

One of the great things about being part of this Labor government, though, is that we are looking at doing something about that and making sure that we put resources into schools and into universities. Just this week I was with the member for Robertson at the Central Coast campus of the University of Newcastle, where we celebrated the $20 million of construction that is just starting there, which came from a funding grant from this government. It highlights the different approach this government takes to education from that of the previous government. To start with, the university campus would not even be in my electorate except for Labor. The former member for Dobell, Mr Michael Lee, fought very hard to make sure that kids on the Central Coast had a university in my electorate so that they could aspire to go there.

In the Central Coast not only do we have trouble retaining kids at high school but we also have one of the lowest rates of university entrance in Australia. That is starting to change since the campus has been there, particularly in the last three years with the injection of real money from this government into that campus. We have seen it grow by 10 per cent a year over the last four years under this government.

In higher education we have turned around what was a deficit in spending from the previous government into a net positive. We are starting to see the benefits. Ninety-five per cent of the kids who go to the Central Coast campus of the University of Newcastle come from the Central Coast. These kids would not often be able to make the trip down to Sydney or up to Newcastle to complete their higher education if it were not for this campus.

We can also look at the work we are doing in schools such as providing computers and trade training programs, which have links with business to provide alternate paths for those who are not going to go to university and never want to contemplate that, to make sure that they get the best chance in life.

One just has to look at the efforts, the direction and the resources that this government has put into education generally and compare them to what happened previously. In higher education, we were coming last in the OECD. We saw a 15 per cent reduction in investment in higher education. As the member for Parramatta said, we were ranked third last for schools in the OECD. The crowning glory of the previous government’s education program was putting flagpoles in schools. Flagpoles in schools may make you feel okay but they do not get you jobs, they do not make sure that kids stay at school and they do not make sure that disadvantaged areas like mine and the member for Fowler’s are looked after properly and given the same chances that richer electorates get and have had for a long time.

What makes the difference is making sure that we have proper training, that we are able to put the investment there and that we give kids the tools that are necessary in the 21st century to get a first-class education and give them the opportunities and the pathways to go right through school to university. Without this government’s investment, none of that would have happened. We were going backwards in education. Areas like mine were being condemned to having generations of young people who were not going to get a job because they did not have the skills and because they did not have the investment in their schools or in their universities.

The opposition’s policy in education was a bit like an episode of F Troop. They were all over the place with no idea of exactly what was happening, saying that putting up a flag in a school was going to resolve every issue. What we have at the moment is a government that has a real response to the issues of school retention rates, and that is having a marked and profound effect in disadvantaged electorates like mine. The member for Fowler should be commended for this resolution. (Time expired)

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fowler for his motion and I concur with it in its entirety. Education is the bedrock of our society and, if we want to continue to grow and build our society, education is a key component of that. The Forde electorate is very fortunate to be home to a great many primary, tertiary and higher education institutions. As I just noted, education is an integral part of our society. It has become a necessity for young people to complete their high school education in order for them to be equipped with the skills and education levels needed to compete in today’s competitive employment market. Along with that is the necessity to be technologically competent.

The Forde electorate comprises the Gold Coast and Ipswich regions. Unfortunately, these regions currently record higher unemployment rates than the national average, currently running at about seven per cent in the Ipswich-Logan region and about six per cent in the Gold Coast region. Even more concerning is youth unemployment. Currently, that is running at about 13.4 per cent, compared to the national average of around 11.7 per cent. The region has also recorded a sharp increase in unemployment over the last couple of years. I was talking to a local business recently where, in the last 18 months, they have laid off 20 per cent of their workforce due to business conditions.

Years 10 to 12 are really important years for high school students in terms of keeping those students engaged in education and pushing that retention rate up from the current level of approximately 76 per cent. I wish to encourage the continuing efforts to push that up to 90 per cent because those students, particularly those living in some of the underprivileged areas, will greatly benefit from that. It will significantly help their future employment opportunities and will give us the opportunity of seeing a reduction in some of those high youth unemployment figures that we see.

In conjunction with that, though, is the necessity, where possible, to encourage local businesses to give priority to employing local youth. Currently, business conditions are very difficult in the south-east corner of Queensland. I mentioned previously a business having laid off 25 per cent of its workforce. It is one of many businesses that are struggling. But there is some good news on the horizon. We have two fantastic initiatives within our community: the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Beenleigh and a new Junior Chamber of Commerce which is being established in Upper Coomera. These programs have been embraced by both the young people and the business community, who are eager to support each other and learn from each other’s experience and expertise. This opens further opportunities for these young people to gain employment. I had the pleasure of addressing the Beenleigh Junior Chamber of Commerce last week at their breakfast. There were approximately 60 students in the room, which I thought was a fantastic turnout and a great testament to the success of that program.

Other benefits include the ability of high school students to interact with fellow students from different schools, who have different things occurring at their school, so they are able to share those experiences and those ideas. The chambers of commerce aid young people by giving them the experience and allowing them to participate in a structured and democratic organisation. They also aid in building community capacity in these fast-growing regions. Certainly, my electorate is one of the fastest growing in the state of Queensland. These organisations also help identify youth issues, and the youth, rather than relying on other people to solve their problems, can work together to solve those problems within their community.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.