Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party, Assistant Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendment be agreed to.

The government supports the amendment made by the Senate, which provides that a review be completed by the Minister for Employment into the operation of the Youth Jobs PaTH program two years after the commencement of this program. A copy of this review will then be tabled in each house of parliament within 15 sitting days after the completion of the report. I commend the amendments to the House.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While this bill is very likely to go through the House and this new program has already commenced, Labor will take every opportunity to highlight its deep concerns about the way this youth internship program has been set up by the government, and we will hold them accountable for the things that we are genuinely concerned are likely to arise under this new internship program. We cannot make it any clearer than this.

Business in Australia is about to get free labour injected into the labour market. Businesses will get access to people without making any contribution of their own. Right from the beginning, they will be given a subsidy to set up the introduction of this intern into their operation and then they will potentially get another subsidy at the end. They will not pay for the labour of that person on the way through.

The young people that are involved in this will be the typical victims of conservative ideology, which is this: if you want a job, you have got to give something up to get that job. In this case, it is that you give up the chance to get paid at the equivalent rate of the national minimum wage. You will be paid less than that on the promise or suggestion that possibly you will get a job at the end of this. There will be this rotation occurring of young interns going through these businesses providing this free source of labour with this Youth Jobs PaTH program.

My issue with this, on top of the concerns that I have already raised, is that, when you look at the 750,000 people who are currently unemployed in this country, you realise that, outside of Defence, the biggest area of procurement for government is the jobactive program at just over $9 billion. If you look at the businesses in Australia that take on people from the jobactive programs from all those jobactive providers that are trying to find people work, the ones that never step in in large numbers to help people get a job are big businesses. Small and medium enterprises do a great lifting of the load, but not big business.

And who are the big champions of Youth Jobs PaTH internship program? The very people who will not take on people out of the jobactive system who are trying to find work? No, it is big business championing the introduction of interns—big businesses like Subway, who are very keen to get involved in this program and bring on interns as, as they describe, 'sandwich artists' under the PaTH program.

This is the thing that we have said. Internship as it is understood in the broader public's mind and internship in the way that it is being sold by this government mean two different things. Most people will want a job program being run by the government to get people into work. We do not want people sitting on their hands. But a lot of people would think that a big company like Subway using a government program where they are being paid to put someone on to do the work at a Subway outlet through an internship program that is costing hundreds of millions of dollars does not add up. It is not a pathway to a long-term, sustainable employment future. That could have already been provided by Subway. They could take those people on right now.

This is the thing that is going to be a bigger and bigger concern in the mind of the public. The way this program is working does not meet the fairness test. It does not seem to be quite right. We think that the way this is being set up is wrong, that people should not be working for less than the national minimum wage and that they should be given a fair dinkum pathway to employment. (Extension of time granted) We think that the investment should be made in fixing job programs that are currently being run by the government.

The challenge in this country is great. We have unemployment recently recorded at the same level as at the height of the GFC. It is nearly 10 years later and we still have unemployment this high. The budget papers themselves say unemployment is expected not to move much in the next 12 months, and the job programs that the government has in place already do not work. People talk about compliance measures in this budget. They already have an activation measure that they use and that has been in place for a while: Work for the Dole. Ninety per cent of the people that go through that do not get a full-time job three months after they have finished. From one of the stats I saw, it probably contributes two per cent to the potential employability or attractiveness of that person.

So now we have PaTH, designed to give people a chance to get a job through a form of work experience. We already have a work experience program: the National Work Experience Program. It is currently under review. Midway through the review, without having the benefit of the advice from the review, in this budget the government is expanding the number of places that are in there. We do not know whether or not the National Work Experience Program is working the way it should and if any of the learnings from there are being applied to PaTH, but a whole lot of money is going to be spent on this program that will pump into a labour market that is weak and characterised by having record high underemployment, where people cannot get enough work and want work, and by having record levels of low wages growth, where people feel that their wages are not getting ahead. This program will pump 30,000 interns into that weakened labour market every single year. People are wondering whether or not they will be able to hold onto their job while they are working alongside people whose wages have been, effectively, subsidised by the government. Business gets them for free. These people wonder whether or not they can hold onto their jobs, hold onto their shifts and hold onto their conditions while the government is pumping 30,000 of these interns into a weakened labour market.

We heard that after one month of this internship program being in place there are apparently 59 interns that have gone through. Bear in mind that 30,000 a year are supposed to come into the labour market. So far the monthly rate would roughly equate to 2,500 interns, and we have only had 59. I will be interested to see whether or not the government picks up the pace on this, because it is a voluntary program.

But here is the prediction: I would not be surprised if this does not get traction. The reason why? It is because people are going to sniff the stench around elements of this program. People are going to detect that this is not an internship program that will be genuinely improving the employability of young people. The more people think that this program is simply providing a platform for young people to be exploited then the less people will go into this program—particularly when they sense they are getting less than the national minimum wage for it.

This amendment that is being considered by the House is about a review. Our concern, and we have already flagged it, is whether or not this will be a thorough, independent review and whether or not it will actually go into the systemic issues of this program that we have concerns about. We as an opposition have flagged that we are more than prepared to have a Senate review, a review by the other place, into this. We believe this will be necessary to ensure a thorough, arms-length, independent review of this system.

As I indicated at the outset, the Labor opposition have very, very deep concerns about this. We have seen already some examples of interns being used not as interns but simply as cheap labour. It is not a fair dinkum way to skill people up and put them on a pathway for long-term employment. We will be watching this program like a hawk and we will be pouncing on every single instance where there has been exploitation of young Australians.

Question agreed to.