Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Three years ago one of my constituents, Tim, was a kid living in an extremely violent home. Amongst the adults he knew, you really were not anyone until you had done some prison time. At 15 he was starting to disengage from school, but this kid was smart. His teachers connected him to TaskForce, a Youth Connections provider in my electorate and they worked intensively to help keep him connected to school when all of his mates were dropping out. This year, Tim will be the first person in his family ever to go to university. For this young person it was a lucky escape.

Youth unemployment is higher than 20 per cent in some parts of Australia. For 15- to 19-year olds looking for full-time work, unemployment is 25.5 per cent on average and tops 40 per cent in some parts of our country. Defined more broadly, an even larger number of young people are disengaging. The Council of Australian Governments reported late last year that 41.7 per cent of disadvantaged young Australians between the ages of 15 to 24 are neither fully engaged in work nor in study.

What really worries me is that when we look at all these measures the situation for Australia's young people is getting worse, not better. For kids who do not make a smooth transition from school into work or further study the future looks bleak. Casual work is rife and disproportionately affects Australians with lower skill levels and younger workers. In a past Australia, people like Lindsay Fox and Paul Keating could go on to incredible professional lives without finishing school, but those days are behind us. In the new economy, skills are king. If young people spend the first years of their working life standing in a dole queue, they may never enjoy secure employment.

That is why we need to support young Australians to stay in education and training for as long as they can. If education is not working out for them, we need to support them to get a fast, secure foothold in the workforce. That is what Youth Connections, delivered so ably by Task Force in my electorate, is for. It has been widely reported that this program is for the chopping block. Youth organisations tell me that Youth Connections works and that cutting the funding would be a mistake. But what they are most concerned about is that Youth Connections will disappear and there will be no program to replace it, that is no specific support for these young people at this critical time of their lives. Most of us in this chamber enjoy the benefits of the new economy, but I can hardly think of anything more socially and economically backward or unfair than cutting funding to young people in our society at the very moment when they need it most. The evidence shows us that life for disadvantaged people in Australia is getting harder, not easier. These kids have potential and they deserve a hand up. If we provide them with that, there will be more people in Australia with a story like Tim's, and that is the kind of Australia most of us want to live in.