Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Abetz suggests that Mr Whiteley is a very good member. If he were a very good member he would be going out to see Senator Abetz and saying, 'This is not going to help young unemployed people in my area. It's not doing anything for them.' On the one hand they have been told to get out there and apply for these jobs in this way and then training pathways have been taken away—all the training that was available to them.

So everyone knows that this is a harsh policy and it does nothing to assist job seekers. But it is not designed to assist job seekers; it is designed to punish them. This is what it is designed to do. Of course, the Newstart under-30s measures that the government is also seeking to implement are designed to punish the job seekers as well. They are designed to punish people because they are unemployed. This is what this government is doing.

As I was saying, on the north-west coast youth unemployment is over 21 per cent and this is a policy that is going to have devastating effects in Braddon when people start to lose all support for a minimum of six months. We know that it can be much longer.

In Tasmania, youth unemployment is 17.4 per cent compared to the national average of just over 12 per cent.