Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am in continuation on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Further Strengthening Job Seeker Compliance) Bill 2015 and in my earlier speech I was talking about the sorts of programs that were in place to support people who found themselves unemployed or needing to do further education, particularly young people.

Labor established the notion of mutual obligation, but mutual obligation works both ways. Mutual obligation rests both with the job seeker and with the government. As I pointed out earlier, we saw a really good program defunded, the Youth Connections program, and it has ceased to exist. And I started to talk about apprentices.

Apprenticeships give young people and mature-age apprentices an opportunity to develop skills that they can take forward. If we want to be an innovative nation then we want to be promoting apprentices and apprenticeships wherever we can. We have seen the government make it harder for apprentices. Labor recognise that taking up an apprenticeship takes money and that not every apprentice can rely on family to stump up the necessary tools of their trade.

Labor also recognise that providing apprentices with access to mentors and other support would lift the completion rates of apprentices. Completion rates are a problem amongst apprentices and when we were in government we believed that one way to ensure that apprentices completed was to make a mentor available to them—someone they could speak to or to get advice from when the going got tough. Because of its blame-the-young-person attitude, the government slashed and burned this program and the results speak for themselves. They cut a billion dollars out of the apprenticeship program. So access to mentoring and the Apprentice to Business Owner program were cut in that first horrendous budget under the Abbott government and now the Turnbull government.

We know that Mr Turnbull has said over and over again that lock, stock and barrel, he supports all of the budgets that this government have put in place. Indeed, he absolutely supports that billion dollars in cuts. So they replaced the apprentice support with apprentice debt by abolishing the Tools For Your Trade Payment program. We saw that they rebadged and cut funding to the Australian apprenticeship centres. They abolished the joint Group Training program and cut support for adult apprentices. Given that we are seeing how the Turnbull government goaded the car industry to the point that they are moving offshore and closing down in Australia, you would think that reskilling mature-age people, particularly through apprenticeships, would be No. 1 on their agenda. Unfortunately, it is not.

What we have seen after two years and the billion dollar cuts to apprenticeship programs is that the number of completions has dropped from 63,000 in June 2013 to just 29,700 in June 2015. What a disgrace. We have seen through the Senate estimates that apprentices often get a raw deal, that they are underpaid and treated badly in the workplace. So any schemes which support and promote apprentices as a way forward, particularly for young people but not exclusively young people, should be supported by the Turnbull government. But again, what we see is this punitive approach, not the support that is needed. We see that carrot and stick, not mutual obligation. The government see mutual obligation as simply resting with the job seeker and nowhere else. So all the effort and all of the compliance is simply there for the job seeker and any programs that might assist in enabling young people and older people to get jobs are ripped away.

The other area that provided great opportunities for young people have been the trade centres, which Labor put in place and, again, which have been chopped. A great opportunity for young people to gain skills, to try out a potential trade and to get a certificate to start them on their journey to work is gone—abolished by this government.

I had the opportunity to attend the opening of the Pinjarra Waroona Trade Training Centre at Pinjarra high school. It is a really fabulous centre, eagerly supported by local business and Alcoa. A big company like Alcoa really thought that that trade training centre at Pinjarra high school was something they would get great benefit from. Thankfully, that is still in existence because it was built when Labor was in government. But to just cut the funding to those trade training centres is another example of where the government does not understand mutual obligation. It simply says it is punitive measures that we need, apparently there is an abundance of jobs out there that people can just pick up and, obviously, people who do not do that are somehow lazy. I saw students at Pinjarra and Waroona high schools attending that centre. They were actively and enthusiastically participating in their learning and saw the centre as giving them real opportunities for a quality job—opportunities that will enable them to stay in that semirural location of Pinjarra and Waroona.

Similarly, Coodanup College in Mandurah—and we should all be very alarmed at this—currently has not one student reaching ATAR levels. I know that you, Madam Acting Deputy President, as someone who is really interested, with a career in the education system, would be appalled at that. Coodanup College, in the heart of Mandurah, has not one student reaching ATAR. We should all be doing whatever we can to help that school. Fortunately, under Labor's scheme, that school qualified for a trade training centre. I visited that trade training centre. The school is very enthusiastic about it, but that school needs more support to enable those young people not only to take up potential trades through that trade training centre but to reach that ATAR level. Interestingly, all the schools that surround that school do have children attaining ATAR levels, and it is the standout school that does not. I think there is a great shame about that. It demonstrates the sorts of cuts we have seen Colin Barnett, the Premier of Western Australia, make to schools and, equally, the $3.2 million that this government has ripped out of every school. Schools like Coodanup College need to be funded according to need so that we can give those children a chance, because postcode is what is defining what is happening at Coodanup College, and it is very clear for everyone to see. It will get its trade training centre and provide those students with a career, but they certainly need help to make sure that they reach ATAR levels. But, again, we saw that the short-sighted nature of the Turnbull government has abandoned these centres too.

Other Labor senators have mentioned the job plan. We heard in evidence that job plans are simply taken off the shelf. They are not individually tailored to people's needs. Many people gave evidence during the inquiry that the job plan was simply one size fits all. No wonder people have trouble signing it—it is not meeting their needs. There is this 'inappropriate behaviour' thing. The department was not able to quantify what that meant. So, yes, Labor stands for mutual obligation, but that cuts both ways, and it is time the government got back on board with what job seekers really need, which is the proper definition of 'mutual obligation', support from the government and sticks when needed, but support needs to be there. This is not all one way: all job seekers who do not get jobs are lazy.