Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You want to talk about apprenticeships—and Senator Cameron, I am happy to have that conversation anytime you like—but your government ripped millions out of apprenticeship programs and indeed in your own campaign documents actually had no budgeted forward estimates for what you had put back in. At least we are actually looking at creative and innovative ways that we can get young people right across the country those key skill sets they need to be employed and to contribute—and not just to contribute to the national economy and pay their taxes and go to work each day but to actually enjoy it. That is why getting out there and having a crack is important.

PaTH is about preparing young people, giving them the opportunity to trial different work options, and then hopefully that young person and the employer will have a meeting of minds and the young person will be offered an ongoing job, which this program supports employers to do—to offer a wage subsidy should that young person fulfil the employer's needs in an ongoing way. I find it quite disingenuous that the Greens are not supporting this initiative. They are out there trying to ramp up a $50-a-week increase to the Newstart allowance. This program offers a $100-a-week increase in the Newstart allowance plus valuable work experience that will assist that young person going forward.

When we were looking at preparing young Australians we were wanting to increase their employability skills training to help them understand the behaviours that are expected by employers in the workplace, which will provide tailored industry-specific training that will prepare our young people going into jobs. We are offering voluntary internships for up to 12 weeks to give our youth a chance to show what they can do in a real, live workplace. And then, as I mentioned, there is a new youth bonus wage subsidy to support the employment of young people. The government is committed to addressing youth unemployment by assisting vulnerable young Australians who are at risk of falling into the welfare trap at an early stage in their lives. You leave school, you are looking around for options, you are not quite sure where life will take you. This program is exactly designed to assist that young person who is not quite sure what the future offers them a pathway to ongoing, sustainable employment.

We recognise that some young people require additional assistance in getting those relevant work-ready skills that they need, and this initiative is backed by data and evidence. As I said, I chaired the Senate inquiry into this bill, and all 15 submitters are committed to addressing the scourge of youth unemployment and commented on our budget allocation of $850 million to the youth employment package. This package was developed by the department though a consultation process in which we went out to the community, to a range of stakeholders, and sought their comments on our program, and we incorporated that in the final package.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry submitted that it strongly supports the Youth Jobs Path initiative 'as an important avenue to secure jobs for young unemployed Australians'. And I think we all acknowledge that this program will give young people real-job work experience. It is not just some tick and flick. It is not just some tokenistic effort. This is about placing young people with real employers so that they can get that hands-on experience.

The Brotherhood of St Lawrence also supported the bill and made some key recommendations. They commented on how rapidly the modern employment environment is changing within Australia and across our economy. It is profoundly testing for a significant proportion of young people—around 30 per cent of young people. The youth unemployment rate sits at double the rate of overall unemployment. As I said, all submitters, including ACOSS, are committed to addressing the issue. The government is to be commended for putting something on the table for consideration.

I want to address a couple of the criticisms that those opposite have raised. One of them was that there is not a decent wage and that is primarily because interns are actually interns. They are not employed as Australian workers. I do not hear anybody opposite critiquing any of the universities in this country that have embedded internship programs in their coursework requirements. University see internships as a valuable opportunity for young people to gain skills and experience in their chosen industry. Why won't you accept that this is an opportunity for young people to trial something that may be of interest to them? I will clarify the payment issue: the $200 fortnightly incentive paid to PaTH interns is on top of their income support. The incentive is paid by the government and is not a wage. If a host organisation paid a PaTH intern, the internship would cease immediately because—you know what?—it would become a job; it would not be an internship. That is the difference.

Senator Brown mentioned the churn culture and the submission from the Department of Employment went exactly to the heart of that by setting out measures to protect against the churn in the PaTH program. They include:

… program guidelines, in combination with the jobactive Deed 2015-2020 and the Transition to Work Deed 2016-2020, to make clear to employment service providers the parameters of the program. Department of Employment monitoring activities will help ensure that host organisations appropriately use the program. … The department's program assurance strategy will be applied to PaTH internships.

In addition the department currently provides program assurance of employment services through a range of prevention, deterrence and detection and correction methods, and these will similarly be applied to the PaTH program.

I think it is quite disappointing when we look at what the alternatives may be. There has been a lot of brouhaha recently around the value or otherwise of internships. I would remind Mr Shorten that he does not mind the odd intern; the Greens, either internationally or here, at home do not mind the odd intern; Lisa Chesters and Brendan O'Connor do not mind the odd intern. In fact many parliamentarians—