Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since the Abbott government was elected just over 12 long months ago, it has become very apparent that this is a government that does not govern on behalf of the poor, the sick, our vulnerable young people, students, the unemployed, Indigenous Australians or many other groups in our community who are deserving of government support. It is hard to know, given the short amount of time I have, which particular area of government policy to focus on—there is so much material and all of it is bad. I have to say that some of the worst excesses of this government will most affect young people—those at school, those at university and those looking for work. I want to make a few comments about some policy areas that have been brought to my attention at home in South Australia by many people.

If anything made us realise that this government lives in an alternate reality, it was the plan to make young unemployed people wait six months before receiving the Newstart allowance and to force them to apply for a ridiculous number of jobs per month. You have to ask: what sort of mind created this policy position? Where did it come from? There is no evidence that such a punitive system would actually get more young people into work. The system has had no support. How are young people supposed to support themselves? If they are not receiving any money, how are they supposed to clothe themselves, feed themselves or pay for the public transport or the haircut they need so they can go and apply for a job?

We know that Minister Kevin Andrews yearns for some utopian ideal where every young person lives at home with their supportive parents until they find a job or, if they are a young woman, find a supportive husband. But it does not happen like that in real life. It does not happen like that for most people anymore. The government is completely out of touch with reality. Young people do support themselves and need an income to do so. They may not have a family to support them and they may not have the opportunities to find or stay in work that those of us in here have had.

The nasty attitude that gave birth to this heartless policy is the view of many in the government that young people on welfare are all bludgers who sit around watching TV and eating Cheezels—as we heard from a government backbencher today. What a totally disrespectful, unhelpful and wrong characterisation of young people. We should be helping them into work in whatever way we can; we should not be propagating these incorrect stereotypes which just turn employers against them.

Labor is not opposed to measures designed to assist people into work. When we were in government, we in fact introduced many policies and reforms that were effective in doing just that. But we will not be supporting government efforts to make it even harder for young people to get work. We will not be supporting any changes that make it harder for young people to get a decent wage either. Today in question time I asked Senator Abetz, the Minister for Employment, about what deals he is doing with Senator Bob Day from South Australia to facilitate Senator Day's grand plan to allow young people to, as he calls it, 'opt out' of the Fair Work system. We know that this has been a long-held dream of Senator Bob Day's, and he has finally made it to the Senate and is using his little bit of power to try and force this draconian industrial relations system on our young people. We know that young people would not legitimately be able to opt out of the fair work date—they would be coerced into doing it by rogue employers who say: 'If you do not work for the amount of money that I am offering you, then you do not get the job at all.' It is an unsustainable model for the economy and it has got no support anywhere, even from employer groups. There is no sustainable way that we can enter into a race to the bottom, particularly when it is with the wages of young people. We should be supporting them into good, well-paid jobs—not forcing them into low-paid jobs, which is what Senator Bob Day—and hopefully not the government, but we suspect probably the government—are intending to do.