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

I rise tonight to make a statement about Australia's young people, particularly the many thousands of young people I represent as the member for Hotham. I believe that the challenges facing Australia's young people are more significant than they have been for many generations. As members of this parliament we enjoyed basic citizenship rights as young people—good education, reasonable housing, job opportunities, affordable health care and support while we were studying and through the tough times that probably all of us in this House experienced. But in today's Australia many young people say the basic tenets of citizenship feel very remote and quite unattainable.

Youth unemployment is at terrifying levels—more than 20 per cent in many parts of the country. One in three Australians who are unemployed at the moment are aged between 15 and 24. We know that disengagement, especially for lower income young people, is at scary levels—40 per cent of young people in low-SES communities are not in full-time employment. Many young people who do work want more hours but are not able to get them or are stuck in insecure casual work and are living the precarious existence that comes with that. Rent in our major cities is out of control and buying a house is a pipedream for many of these young people.

This parliament must confront the very difficult fact that we may be looking at the first generation of Australians who will be poorer than their parents. What has the government done for these young Australians? Instead of providing additional support, they have made young people the focus of their cruel first budget. There are changes to force young people to wait six months to get Newstart—without income for six months—and changes that raise the qualifying age for Newstart from 22 to 25, so unemployed young people will have to live on the lesser amount of youth allowance, which for the House's information leaves after rent somewhere around $10 a day for all other expenses. Youth Connections has been cut. The government is paving a path for universities to charge $100,000 for degrees in science and nursing. And on climate change the government is kicking the can down the road—removing a price on carbon so that the next generation coming up behind us will be the ones who have to take tough action. We know that climate action will cost more the longer we leave it, but we are leaving these young Australians to foot the bill.

I wanted to understand—straight from the young people in my electorate—what they felt about life in Australia today. So I surveyed them recently and I wanted to report my findings to the House. These young Australians are very angry and they have a right to be. Eighty-three per cent said that they disagreed with the Abbott government forcing under-30s to wait six months to get Newstart. One young person said simply, 'With no income, how do you suppose we survive?' Young people believed they would need to stay at home for longer and that that would put pressure on their families. As one young person said, 'My parents already struggle enough to keep up with payments. Giving them more burden will just create more stress and debt.' Sixty-seven per cent said they disagreed with raising the age for Newstart and students were overwhelmingly concerned about being a burden on their families as a result of the proposed changes to university funding. Many said that, as a result of the changes, they would not study.

As well as undertaking the youth survey, I recently had the pleasure of meeting 20 bright young women to talk about their policy ideas for Australia. It is to our great shame that the major concern of these delightful, well-educated and motivated young women was their very deeply held fear that they might never be able to get into secure work. I have never come across as much anxiety in a group of young people as I felt in that roomful of the brightest young people our nation has to offer. Are they full of optimism and a sense of possibility? No, they are worried about never getting out of insecure work, never paying off their university fees and never being able to afford a house.

As some of our young people have said, work conditions are lousy and to expect people to live in that type of insecurity with no backstop only shows the immense gap between the people making the laws and those affected by them. Another comment—perhaps not quite as eloquently put, but very much in the voice of a young person—was:

What type of drugs do you think Tony Abbott and his cabinet took before coming out with Budget 2014?'

I will finish with some sage advice from a young person in my electorate:

There seems to be a tendency for those in parliament to do things which benefit them, without thinking about the implications of their actions for the younger generation. Whenever possible, please consider how future generations will deal with decisions that are made now.

This government is treating our young people as if they are a burden to the country, as if they are undeserving, as if they have done something wrong.

This is an unprecedented attack on the young people of our country. They are not a burden; they are our greatest asset. I urge other members to take notice of what this future generation of young Australians are saying. They are deeply concerned for their future and the direction the government is taking this country. (Time expired)