Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to speak on Australia's youth in the Commonwealth's Year of Youth. I want to begin my remarks by congratulating my friend the shadow minister for youth and member for Moncrieff for her impassioned speech yesterday in the House on this topic, and I thank her for sharing her story with the parliament again. It is an inspiration to the many young people who were watching on from the galleries yesterday. Of course, I also want to thank the Minister for Youth, the honourable member for Cowan, for her words in the House, for the dedication she has to the youth of our country and for her work within the government in this key policy space.

Throughout the toughest times of COVID, particularly the lengthy lockdowns faced by Western Sydney and Melbourne, there was a big focus on businesses and economic recovery—rightly so, given that, without this adequate support, more livelihoods, and lives, could have been lost. But I thought, this year being the Commonwealth Year of Youth, it gives the King's realms and the Commonwealth of nations a chance to reflect on how COVID has impacted our young people and on the additional support they still need to fully recover.

In my role as the shadow assistant minister for mental health and suicide prevention, I speak with many young people when I attend headspaces and I speak to many youth mental health organisations, and I want to make a special mention of Youth Insearch for the incredible work that they do to support young people across our country. Youth Insearch has a terrific peer-worker model which assists many young people who find that the usual mental health system does not fit their needs. I've had young people from Youth Insearch come to my office a couple of times now, and I'm so impressed with their passion and the work they do for other young people when it comes to mental health. Many young people who attend Youth Insearch are referred to the program by their school as an avenue to speak with other kids and youths about similar struggles and issues they may have gone through or continue to go through. This may include trauma or difficulties with mental health.

I met with Youth Insearch here in parliament and I was so pleased to speak at a breakfast held here in Parliament House, where we heard some amazing stories of resilience and recovery. The peer workers have lived experience, and sometimes this can impact them. However, Youth Insearch has protocols in place to ensure they are supported when they need additional assistance. I've asked how young people who have gone through their own issues have resilience when they speak to other young people, and I'm really impressed with the model that Youth Insearch has to ensure that young people are protected in the space. I want to give a big shout-out to Courtney, Kate, Marlie, Nelani and Telly, who have all signed my End Youth Suicide T-shirt that proudly hangs in the foyer of my parliament office.

We must end the stigma that comes with mental health to ensure that those who feel embarrassed, particularly young men, feel supported to come forward and speak with their general practitioner or school counsellor, and get the help they need from a psychologist or a psychiatrist or be referred to a program like Youth Insearch. I emphasise that young people went through so much during COVID. I hear stories. I know this from personal experience; my son was in year 12 during the lockdowns. Kids are still going through the after-effects of those lockdowns, with the lack of connection they had with their peers during that time.

A few days ago the Minister for Youth released the net round of youth advisory panels. There is a mental health and suicide prevention youth advisory panel. I want to thank Arsh, Ipshita, Isabelle, Jessica, Katherine, Sankara, Saul and Troy for putting up their hands to be members of this very important body. I want to let you know that your work really matters. Keep fighting for what you believe in and what you think needs to happen in the mental health space across our country. I extend an open invitation to the government, to the Minister for Health and Aged Care and the assistant minister for mental health, to meet with myself and the shadow minister for health and this youth advisory group, to work on bipartisan solutions to reduce suicide in young people across Australia. As we always say, mental health should not be political; we should all be in there together trying to achieve the same outcomes.

In parliament I recently met with members of the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition, who shared with me that the cost of living is a top issue for young people; this is what is most on their minds. They're getting smashed by rising power bills and the cost of rent. I met with Luke, who is a peer worker from Lindsay's headspace at Penrith, who told me that he is speaking with those as young as 16 who are being faced with a choice between putting food on the table and accessing psychology sessions. MindFlare, a psychology practice in Glenmore Park in Lindsay, has told me that, due to the cost-of-living crisis hitting Western Sydney, people are now making the decision not to have psychology sessions. They are experiencing mass cancellations of psychology sessions.

This comes at a time when Suicide Prevention Australia has just released its latest quarterly Community Tracker, which found that half of those surveyed, including young people, experienced elevated cost of living and personal debt distress. The figure rose by five per cent this quarter. I raise this because many young people are supported by their parents or carers. These cost-of-living pressures are impacting younger youth as their parents struggle to pay for the mental health sessions they need after the government cut them in half.

Young people are still struggling from COVID, with social anxiety figures very high amongst those who are in later high school or their early years of university. These young people missed out on key milestones like attending a formal, going out in their first year of university and TAFE interactions, which we all know are so important. Recently I met with Hayley, who has started a petition asking the government to return the psychology sessions that were cut from 20 to 10 this year. She has 42½ thousand signatures on her petition. Hayley is from Western Sydney. She's 19 years old, and her peers are telling her that they really need the psychology sessions back. I want to congratulate Hayley for her tenacity, for her passion and for her drive to keep going.

I want to see more action in this space from the government. After all, recommendation 12 of the Better Access evaluation report said the additional 10 sessions should continue. They should have continued until the government had a plan to replace them with a service it deemed more worthy, not just cut them away without anything to improve the system and access to psychology sessions across this country. Instead, with the cost of living slamming young people right now, and it being their No. 1 concern, they are now faced with not having access to these sessions. This is a disgrace. I join with Hayley and the thousands of other people across our country who are pleading with this government to return those sessions.

I want to see more jobs in Western Sydney for local young people, to keep our youth local and ensure that they don't have to leave our beautiful community for work. They can stay, they can live and they can work in Western Sydney. This includes advanced manufacturing jobs. I thank the previous federal and New South Wales coalition governments for getting on with Western Sydney airport, which will allow more locals to live and work in Western Sydney. This amazing piece of infrastructure will unlock so much potential for jobs and investment in Lindsay and our region. I cannot wait to see the new jobs that will happen in and around the airport and that will ensure jobs for young people in Western Sydney for many years to come. I think of the superexcited faces of those young schoolchildren when they come to parliament in years 5 and 6, and I think, 'When you're finishing high school, the airport will be built and you'll have all these wonderful opportunities.' I have to say that I do ask if any of them want to be a politician; not many raise their hands. But so many raise their hands when I say, 'Who wants to work in the space industry?' That is what is coming to Western Sydney, with the international airport, brand-new industries and jobs in areas that we haven't even thought of yet. The future is so bright for young people in Western Sydney if we keep going along the trajectory of making this investment happen.

To conclude, I want to thank the work done by amazing teachers across every school in Lindsay; there are too many to name. I also want to thank Western Sydney University campuses at Kingswood and Werrington and the TAFE campus at Kingswood for their work with young people, providing quality tertiary education to Lindsay students and those across Western Sydney.

Australia is known as the lucky country. I believe in our youth and their aspirations for themselves and for our nation. Education and adequate mental health support is vital for our young people right now. They should have the best start for the future. I wish them all the best for the year ahead.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would be remiss of me to not talk about the minister's statement, given that prior to coming to this place I worked in the youth sector—and we have the member for Riverina here. In fact, I met the member for Riverina many years ago when I was hosting a youth forum in his electorate. I think it was in the township of Griffith, from memory. I was really pleased to see the member for Riverina there. That's because all of us here should be really engaged with the young people in our community. We should, I think, as a first focus, very much think about the needs of young people in our decision-making.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate the government for having a youth minister. One of my first questions when I came into this place was to ask then Prime Minister Turnbull why we didn't have a youth minister. He had a little bit of a cheeky response. He said that he and his cabinet felt very youthful. He then mentioned that many of the members of his cabinet were parents of young people or indeed, I think, grandparents of young people. The previous government did appoint a minister for youth—a minister for youth and aged care, from memory. That was a senator who I think was also probably a grandfather of a young person—not that there's anything wrong with that. What I'm trying to say here is that it's really important that we have a minister for youth, and I think that that minister should sit within cabinet, because the decisions we make today that affect young people will have ramifications for generations to come.

There are a couple of issues I'd like to talk about. Prior to coming in this place I had a role as the national executive officer for a program called Youth Connections. We haven't, in this place, since that program was cut in 2014, had a program that was there to support young people to re-engage with education. We do have Transition to Work, which is a very good program, but that's about connecting young people into employment, many for the first time. But we don't have a program that scoops up those young people who are falling out of the education system in year 7 or year 8. We don't have a federal government program anymore that scoops them up and helps them to get back and, hopefully, finish year 11, year 12 or equivalent. We know that the best tool that you can have in order to live a good life, a life of fulfilment, is a good education. I would urge the government to go back in time and look at the program called Youth Connections that you had when you were last in government. From the 1970s through to 2014, there was always a federal government program that invested in young people who were outside of the school gate to get them back inside the school gate and worked with their families to do so.

I'd also like to touch upon youth unemployment. While you could say that nationally our unemployment figures are very healthy, youth unemployment is always stubbornly higher than the national unemployment rate. I think it normally sits at around double. Where I'd like to go with this is for us to look at what is happening overseas. For many years the EU has had a youth jobs guarantee—that is, where there are no jobs in the market for a young person and where market programs run by various employment services are failing young people, it provides a youth guarantee.

I've got to also commend a previous government. When we had Tony Abbott as Prime Minister, one thing he did do for youth—even though there were many things that he cut from young people and didn't do for youth—was the Green Army. I would really urge the government to look at that again. That was a fantastic program. In my electorate I met a young man who was of refugee background. He had travelled—many people don't know South Australia—from the northern suburbs by train, then on another train way down to the end of the train line at Seaford Meadows, where he then got picked up by a car to get down to Mount Compass and be part of the program that was rehabilitating the grasslands and swampland there. There are some particularly important frogs and birds that live in that grassland.

I would really urge the government to reconsider that program. Not only was it good for the environment; it allowed a lot of young people who had not had experience in the workplace to build those soft skills, get up early in the morning and connect with other people outside of their family and friends. It was an excellent program, and I think all of the young people in that program from my electorate went on to roles, largely, in the environment sector, which they were pleased to hold. It was a great loss when we had a change in prime ministership that then resulted in the ending of that program.

I'd also like to talk about the fact that when I was a young person—

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a while ago!—government was actually the largest employer of apprentices. They were the ones who employed more apprentices than anyone else, and now we rely on the private sector to employ apprentices. But, if you are a small business, it is very challenging to take on an apprentice. A lot of small businesses feel they don't have the confidence and supports to be able to take on an apprentice. In particular, that's because in the first couple of years the apprentice is generally costing the business money, and with tight margins that's very challenging. So I would urge the government to have a little bit of a look at that whole program and how so many young people are not finishing their apprenticeships.

The last thing I would like to raise is Youth Allowance. Youth allowance is pitiful. We think JobSeeker is a very low amount, but you can't live on youth allowance. You just can't. There are many young people who are 20 or 21 who are independent. They are outside of home. They can't physically be in the home either because they've got to study and that's far away from home, or because home is just not a safe place to be. We hear people talk about the rate of JobSeeker and how for years there's been a call to lift the rate. I acknowledge that the previous government did lift the rate a small amount, but youth allowance was left untouched. Quite frankly, I don't think you could keep a dog or a cat alive on youth allowance, let alone a young person. So I would urge the government, in this budget, to look at Youth Allowance and make sure it is sustainable so that young people have a bright future in our nation.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have great pleasure in joining the debate this morning and I'd like to associate myself with the thoughtful contribution from the member for Mayo. I think she raised many interesting points and valid points, particularly about young people in regional areas and their experiences in our country today. It's that good, common sense that the member for Mayo brings to this place, which I think the government would be well advised to listen to because I think the government needs to realise, sooner rather than later, that it is a very urban focused government. It is a very urban focused government by virtue of the fact that the overwhelming majority of members of the government do live in an urban environment.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the members opposite who claim a little bit of regionality. I'll give you Lyons. It's a big stretch to see Blair, on the outskirts of Brisbane, with the City of Ipswich, as being particularly regional.

I hear the member for Blair, and I always listen to him because he used to be my shadow minister—so I often heard from the member for Blair. It's not a criticism I'm trying to direct at you in any way whatsoever. It's just an indication of what we have seen in recent election results. The Labor Party has dominated right across mainland Australia—and congratulations to the Labor Party in that regard—but there is a great divide now between where the Labor Party is drawing its electoral strength and where people like me and the member for Riverina live and work on a daily basis. I've offered in all good faith to be available to the Prime Minister to provide feedback for communities that are more than a couple of hours away from a capital city. The Nationals' communities are all more than a couple of hours away from capital cities, and the challenges we face in those regional areas are particularly felt by young people.

The regional youth experience is very different from the metropolitan youth experience, and as members who live in those rural and regional communities we bring a certain level of expertise and understanding of those communities that we can offer the government in good faith. This is not about the member for Gippsland standing up and trying to bash the government. It's more about saying that we live in those communities, we work in those communities, our families are there, and we understand that some of the policies that come out of Canberra, and Sydney and Melbourne, really don't play that well in a regional location. They simply don't work on the ground. We had that same experience from time to time with our Liberal cousins as well; don't get me wrong. It's a never-ending challenge for those of us in the Nationals to try and make sure that regional perspectives are understood.

My role as the member for Gippsland—and my good friend the member for Riverina would share this passion. We want to see young people in regional communities have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. I think that's a shared vision across the parliament: we want to see young people growing up in Australia having the opportunity to achieve their full potential. But in the regions there are often other barriers that get in the way of that occurring, and I've spent my whole political career in this place working to try and address some of those barriers.

I want to refer specifically to the challenges we have around increasing participation in university by kids from a regional background. There is no-one on this planet—certainly no-one in Australia, I would hope—that would think that country kids aren't as smart as city kids, but our participation rate in tertiary studies is vastly below that of students from an urban environment. In my electorate of Gippsland we have the second worst tertiary participation rate in the state of Victoria. The only region that's worse is Mallee, and Mallee is probably worse because it's more regional, rural and remote than even my electorate.

Now, some of these challenges are challenges we have to address ourselves, as leaders in our own communities. As leaders in our own communities we have to explain to young people in our community—and help instil in them confidence, hope, optimism and aspiration—that, just because no-one in their family has finished year 12, they can't finish year 12. Just because no-one in your family has been to university, there's no reason why you can't be the first person in your family to go to university. They're aspirational challenges I think we, as local members, have to work with our communities on, in partnership with the education sector.

The aspirational barrier is one that is our problem, but the economic barrier, the affordability barrier, the accessibility barrier, are government problems. They're the Group of Eight's problems as well. They have to work with our communities to make it more accessible for people from regional communities, and, as governments, we have to try and address the affordability issue better. The previous government, to its credit, started down that pathway with the tertiary access payment improvements and independent youth allowance improvements, but we didn't finish the job. I implore the new government to have another look at this issue and understand from a regional perspective how that accessibility and affordability piece is actually working against some of our young people achieving their full potential. I say in all genuineness that there are still challenges out there for regional students to go on and attend university.

Of course, as the member for Mayo indicated a few moments ago, it's not all about university. You can have great careers in regional towns doing an apprenticeship, doing a trade or starting your own small business. Again, we have to make sure that is accessible to our students in our communities and they can see that pathway for themselves.

Let's not kid ourselves: it's been a pretty tough time for young people in regional Australia. I look at my community, who came out of a drought into a bushfire, then into a COVID situation and lockdowns. Whatever you want to point to, there has been trauma in our regional communities. So making sure people are well supported and they can see a pathway for themselves is, again, a challenge for us as leaders in our communities. We need to instil that hope and that confidence and optimism. We need to be sharing positive stories with young people in regional areas so they can see a future for themselves in those communities. COVID has really made it difficult for communities to get together. As we emerge from the pandemic and as we start getting together more often, our challenge in our communities is to share that story of positivity and hope and to invest in their education and in them achieving their full potential.

The pathways are not always, as I said, about university. There are pathways into trades, into vocational skills and also into the Defence Force. As a former minister for defence personnel, I know the diversity of opportunities that exist for young people in the Defence Force.

I want to take one last point in the moment I have left and refer to the comments of the member for Mayo in relation to the Green Army. I believe that is another huge opportunity for us as a nation—to invest in the skills and the training of young people who are very passionate about the environment and quite rightly so. If I have one criticism about the current debate in Australia when it comes to the environment, it is that it has become very singularly focused on emissions and only on emissions. I'm someone who believes that we do have to do our share to reduce emissions, but, at 1.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent of total global emissions, Australia doesn't have the solution to emissions by itself. We do have the solution to some of the natural resource management issues in our communities—issues around biodiversity, pest animal control and pest plant control. We have those solutions in our own country. It's up to us as Australians to address those broader environmental issues, beyond the global challenge of reducing our emissions.

The member for Mayo talked about the Green Army and the role it can play. What we're seeing right now in Victoria is deliberate public policies to cut down jobs in a whole range of industries where regional people have often sought to be employed, whether that be in the timber sector, the energy sector or paper manufacturing. We in Gippsland are the custodians of a vast natural estate. We have huge areas of public land—state forests and national parks—but very few jobs associated with that. There are very few jobs that are actually boots on the ground doing practical environmental work. There is a huge opportunity in my electorate for training and skill development in areas like the Green Army, leading into careers in the service of the natural environment. We want more people trained in bushfire hazard reduction, critical asset protection around our towns and pest plant and animal control—real biodiversity measures that I think young people in regional Australia will be very attracted to because they can see tangibly the work they're doing to improve the environment in regional Australia.

When we talk about young people in our regional communities, it's blatantly obvious they are the future. We need to invest in their education, invest in the opportunities for them to achieve their full potential and work with them to ensure they see a future for themselves outside the capital cities. I thank the House.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to address a few of the points the member for Gippsland raised in that contribution. I take it that he said them in good faith, and I know he often extends a hand of friendship. I just want to put on the record that, upon coming to government, the Albanese government has actually funded 20,000 new university places highly geared towards students from regional areas and Indigenous youth. We knew, coming into government, that there was a vast gap in terms of tertiary education for young people from the regions, and we sought to address that gap. That's a gap that built up over nine years of coalition government, in which the member opposite was a senior member of the government—and I'm sure he was a voice in the cabinet from time to time, as was the member for Riverina, speaking up for the regions.

I'll take that interjection, Member for Gippsland! It's in the Hansard now! But, of course, they had their colleagues in the Morrison Liberal Party to contend with. So, upon coming to government, we recognised that young people in the regions have just as much of a right, and the ability and proficiency, to go to university as young people from right across the country.

Tertiary education is not for everybody, but, if those kids—whether they're in Dubbo or in a capital city; it doesn't matter where they are—show the aptitude for university education, and that's the path they want to go down and they have the ability, we want to make sure that that pathway is open to them. That's it for us. We don't believe that a university education should be the preserve of a privileged few, based on income. It should certainly not be based on income and certainly not on distance from a university or location. So we are absolutely 100 per cent dedicated to supporting students from regional areas who show the aptitude and have the proficiency to go to university and get that education.

It's also worth noting that this government has brought in 180,000 fee-free TAFE places, because we know there are areas of critical skills shortages in this country. Again, they built up over nine years of a coalition government that actually defunded TAFEs across the country, including in regional areas, closing down the pathways for young people to get qualifications in a trade and to enter into traineeships. There were fewer young people coming out of traineeships in 2022 than there were in 2013, when the coalition came to office, despite a population increase in Australia over that time and despite ongoing economic growth. Explain the maths of that to me! How can you have a certain number of young people doing traineeships in 2013, and then, nine years later, have fewer, yet there has been economic growth. That doesn't make sense to me.

Five out of six jobs created by our Powering Australia plan will be in the regions. We are absolutely committed to that, and, of course, a lot of those will be for young people. That's a great pathway for young people.

Before I go, I want to give a quick shout-out to Rural Youth, a fantastic group of young people in my state. Every year in Tasmania, Rural Youth put on Agfest, which is a three-day festival of everything country. It is one of the best ag shows in the country. I invite the member for Riverina and the member for Gippsland to come down to Tasmania for Agfest. It's on in May. I know the member for Braddon will join me in saying that Agfest is an absolutely stellar show. It's put on by volunteers and by youth—they're all under 30, from memory, which is youthful in my eyes! It's all volunteer run and it's an absolutely first-class show, so I give a really big shout-out to Rural Youth.

One last thing: tomorrow the current round of applications closes for the Local Sporting Champions grants. I'm sure I'm joined by members across the chamber in encouraging all young people and their families to apply. If they're going off to compete in championships of state, national or international significance, they can apply for a Local Sporting Champions grant and get some of those costs reimbursed if their application is successful.

There are a lot of programs that support young people. Frankly, there were under the former government, but there also are under this government. We have 20,000 extra regional university places, 180,000 fee-free TAFE places and, very importantly, five out of six jobs being created under Powering Australia will go to regional areas, with many of them to be filled by young people. This government is absolutely on the side of youth. I thank the member for Gippsland for his contribution. He was right on some things and not right on others. We are absolutely committed to young people, including young people in the regions.