Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call on the government to match Labor's election commitment to purchase a property for a wonderful organisation in my electorate, Youth Links in Noble Park. Youth Links is a crucial support service run by South East Community Links for young people in south-east Melbourne. It is a welcoming place and at the recent election Labor promised $600,000 to purchase a permanent property for South East Community Links to run this program. They currently spend a large proportion of their budget every year on rent, which could much better be used in services to the community. In the scheme of the national budget, $600,000 is not a lot. I was just doing the sums in my head and thought, 'If every member in this chamber took a Youth Links purchase at $600,000, that would cost $90 million and—if we abandoned the stupid, ridiculous plebiscite—you would still save $90 million from the plebiscite.'

Every month, Youth Links sees over 300 young people, sometimes engaging upwards of 1,000 face-to-face contacts for a range of services and around 40 per cent, at any given time, of these services are actually provided to new migrants, who really need that support. Most importantly, there is a drop-in service which is provided every afternoon for young people to access a youth worker and talk about any problems or issues they have.

In my electorate, we are a hotspot of youth unemployment; it is pushing 20 per cent and there are anecdotal reports of it being 40 or even 50 per cent in some migrant communities. This is a crucial service, and I really urge the government to match Labor's commitment to social justice and find this small amount of money to fund the new premises for Youth Link.