Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The reason that the Greens are moving the suspension of this particular bill, the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Youth Jobs Path: Prepare, Trial, Hire) Bill 2016, is that this bill was a warm-up to the attack on young people. What happened to the days when Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister swaggered around in his leather jacket? He has swapped the leather jacket for the Tony Abbott blue tie. He has no care at all for the future of young people in this country, and this pathways bill is an attack on young people. Do you know what it does? It sets up an entire group of young people as a team of slaves to corporate Australia. It says: 'Here is cheap labour and free labour. Work these young people into the ground and we will give you a tick and a flick from the government.' This is the first attempt of the massive attack on young people coming down the line from this government.

What did we see come out of the budget last night? We saw more assaults on young people across this country. We saw a $3.8 billion cut to university education. This, again, is from a Prime Minister who talks about wanting to be the Prime Minister of innovation and of having a future where we are a clever and smart country. Well, no. He is going to drive down the quality of education in this country through these cuts, making it harder for young people to get a university education and harder for them to pay off their debt at the end. Meanwhile, of course, the government is doing nothing, absolutely zilch, zero when it comes to tackling housing affordability and living costs. This government cares a lot about corporate Australia and a lot about wealthy Australians and does not give two hoots about young people. It does not give two hoots about their education. It does not give two hoots about the future of the country for them and what kind of future they are going to have in terms of the health of the planet.

Of course, climate change was not in the budget. It was like the government just searched for the term 'climate change' and pressed delete. It was deleted from the budget in its totality. This is from the Prime Minister who said he wanted to tackle some of the biggest issues facing not just Australia but the globe, and yet he has squibbed it over and over again.

There are some nice, fluffy things in the budget, of course. There is the bank levy, which is good. We give that a tick. Whatever. But of course the Prime Minister had to come up with a nasty sting in the tail to satisfy those grumps on his backbench—the Tony Abbotts of the world. The former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is still barking away in the background. So what has the Prime Minister done? He has decided to make life tough for young Australians and students. There had to be a nasty sting in the tail, and it ended up being for young people.

This bill is directly linked to the assault on young people in the budget. It is the warm-up. So not only are we going to blame and punish young people now for being unemployed; we are going to then start funnelling them into being trainees and interns where they are not going to get paid proper wages. Do you know that this bill says that young people can be paid $7.60 an hour? That is the equivalent wage. It is disgusting. That is slave labour in this country, and this government should be ashamed of it.

The government is saying to young people that it is their fault they are unemployed and they are going to be punished because we have a massively high unemployment rate. In my home state of South Australia, which has the highest unemployment rate for young people in the country, where are the projects to build jobs for young people? They just do not exist. Young people are being punished for the fact that we have low jobs growth in this country, and now it is going to be much more difficult for them to even get an education and to retrain to get into the jobs of the future.

This government does not give a damn about young people. Malcolm Turnbull has given up on the future generations of this nation. He has given up on tackling climate change, which of course young people are very concerned about. He has given up on investing in our education system, which of course is very important to young people right across this country. Then he says, 'While we're doing all that, you're in trouble because you don't have a job. We'll step on you while you're already down. Then, if you're lucky enough, we'll put you into an internship and you'll get paid $7.60 an hour'—for slave labour! It is absolutely disgusting. (Time expired)