Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (18:20): What a fairytale we have just been subjected to in the House of Representatives. The Labor Treasurer who took us from zero net debt to $667 billion of debt and deficits approaching $50 billion a year was saying in this House that somehow we cannot achieve a surplus. The perpetrator of all of this just walked out the door. The reason we have high youth unemployment and unemployment in an unsuitable zone is the past seven years of a very bad Labor government, which in part was led by the former Treasurer, the member for Lilley, who has just left this room.

It is very difficult to understand how he could come here today and criticise this government putting forward the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015, which attempts to deal with the youth unemployment crisis that is facing our nation. This bill sends the right signal to young job seekers, young people of ability who are able to get a job. We are going to take some measures to ensure that it is not the case that they go straight from high school to the Centrelink office.

We have some points of difference with the member for Lilley. He does not see a problem with young people being on welfare. This is the view of the modern Labor Party. Once upon a time the Labor Party were the party of the workers. The trade union leaders had actual trades. I am not sure how many trade union leaders over there even have a trade these days—in fact, probably very few or none. They represented workers against their bosses. But what we are seeing at the moment in Labor's opposition to this legislation is that Labor has truly become the party of welfare, the party of the handout.

It was ironic for the member for Lilley to tell us that he supports a hand-up when we see youth unemployment at high levels, with young people taking welfare, and the Labor Party seems to think that is some sort of career choice—some sort of good deal for young people. The real form of poverty comes from sustained periods on welfare. The way out of poverty is for people to get jobs. The way to get jobs is to get a strong economy—to have a government dedicated to getting a strong economy, not to redistributing wealth, as the member for Lilley likes to say. That is taking wealth from the productive and handing it around. That works for a period of time, but you get to a point in a welfare state, which we are at now, where we have an enormous government debt and a government deficit, and the member for Lilley is content to say: 'Well, let's just keep on spending that money. There is no problem. We have no difficulty going forward.' That is not the reality of what any federal government will now face from this point going forward. It is a reality crunch which tells us that we cannot afford the current welfare state model and that we need to take measures to help get people back to work and to have a stronger economy generating more jobs and more prosperity.

I want to commend the Minister for Social Services for putting the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015, which is before us today, because this is a very balanced, very fair piece of legislation. Yes, it has taken some time to work with the sector to get to a bill of this nature, and it does very fairly deal with people who are unable to seek work, through many different facets. We have taken account of issues such as disability, impairment, single mothers or people who are pregnant. We are being very realistic in this bill about the circumstances, difficulties and dilemmas that young people face. But it is, of course, the right signal to say to young people: 'We expect you to be fully focused on getting a job all of the time.'

When you look now at all of our major cities, including many of the electorates that the Labor Party represents and that the member for Lilley would know about, we now have problems of intergenerational welfare, where whole families have been on welfare not simply for one generation but for more than a generation. This, of course, is no good way for these people to live. They do not want to live on welfare. They would like to get jobs and get moving. They would like their lives to progress. Real poverty comes about from intergenerational welfare. Real prosperity comes about from a strong economy providing jobs and people being able to access those jobs, and that is what this bill is about. It is about saying to all those able young people, 'Get a job when you leave high school; don't get into that welfare poverty trap,' because we know that, when a person gets onto welfare, they are more likely to stay on welfare. They are more likely to get trapped on welfare. They are more likely to lose their skills and focus over time the longer they spend on welfare.

Of course, the government, the Australian people, the Australian taxpayer and successive Labor and Liberal governments have provided free public education and access to university for almost anybody that wants to seek it in Australia, with a generous HECS loan system that is being reinforced by this government to ensure anybody can access university. We are prepared to pay for people to go to university to get a degree. We are prepared to pay for them to get another degree, to retrain to get a trade or to go through the VET sector. The government is prepared to pay for any young person to continue their training or retraining or whatever they have to do to find the right trade or get the right skill to go and get a job. Given that that is the attitude of the government, of the Australian people and of the taxpayer, all the measures in this bill before us are saying to those young people: 'That is what we want you to be doing. We don't want you to be claiming welfare.'

When you think about the situation in Australia today, there are plenty of small businesses all around this nation that would like to add more workers, and more young workers in particular. But we have the member for Lilley lecturing us about industrial relations unfairness. How is it fair that a very small business, a cafe, has to pay a higher penalty rate on a Sunday than the local McDonald's across the road? It makes no sense. It stops that small business from employing as many young people as it might like on a Sunday. It means that there are fewer shifts or, in many cases in regional areas, that small businesses are unable to open and take on a young worker. Without the flexibility in the labour market that small business needs—and I reiterate that I am talking specifically about small business and how the inflexibility of the industrial relations system affects it—how does this help young people? The answer is that it does not.

So we have a Labor Party that is rigidly opposed to labour market reform, except of course if you are prepared to offer a massive payment to an individual union, we have learnt. If, under the table, you hand over millions of dollars then you will get some productivity, some movement and some difference, but not if you want to take on young people for more shifts and, as a cafe, open your doors on a public holiday in a regional area. You will get zero flexibility from the Australian Labor Party. You will get not one iota of movement. That would generate hundreds of thousands of extra shifts and extra jobs across the country, but of course there is no big business that can offer a multimillion-dollar payment to a union to facilitate that. That, of course, is what we really see going on in youth unemployment in Australia today.

Mr Feeney: Deputy Speaker, on a point of order, I appreciate that these contributions often get very willing and that there is typically an amount of latitude provided to speakers, but I think this speaker is casting aspersions upon members of this House that perhaps he needs to reflect on.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ): Please continue.

Mr HAWKE: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I understand why the member for Batman made that point of order. If he knows which members I am casting aspersions on, I would refer him to the royal commission. He could report those names, and we could then get on with identifying how these payments are made and what they are for. We will see.

Returning to youth employment, which is what I am speaking about, the member for Batman could listen very carefully, because this is all intertwined. The Labor party is opposing this bill because it is 'unfair' to young people. It is unfair to tell able young people who can get a job that they have a lifetime of welfare ahead of them. It is unfair to say, 'There'll be a handout for you at all times.' The reality of life is very different, and it is Orwellian for the member for Lilley, who has created so much dysfunction in our economy and disadvantage for young people through his industrial relations policies and his economic mismanagement, to tell us that we are somehow sending people into a bearpit where they will be crucified. That is the kind of language that he uses. This is the real world.

When people leave school, they are expected to get a job not to rush down the road to go to the local Centrelink office. It is not what we want young people to do. Of course there are circumstances and there is the reality of life as well on the other side of the coin where people are genuinely disadvantaged, where they do need the support of government and where they do need to go to the Centrelink office for various actual reasons. That is why this bill is so good. That is why the Minister for Social Services consulted so widely, including with organisations like ACOSS, organisations that deliver welfare services for young people and organisations that employ young people and assist young people to get jobs.

I know many business organisations that are desperate for young people's labour. I know many organisations that need skilled young workers urgently. We know that unions continue to push for younger and younger people to be paid adult wages. When they recently won their case at Fair Work for 21-year-olds to be paid adult wages, they said they are going to push for even younger. These sorts of things do not help young people. Your first job is not your last job. In today's economy, we know young people are going to have many, many career changes. There is nothing wrong with that in the modern economy. It is flexible and dynamic. It is growing fast. It is changing fast. Young people need to be taught to train, to retrain, to compete and to do whatever they can to improve themselves to live with the pace of life that we have today. That is the reality that will face most people seeking work today. Your first job in a cafe or a fast-food chain is not expected to be your last job. It is the sort of job you have while you retrain or go to uni, or do the education work that you need to do to get the job you are interested in.

That is why it is vital government policy to support young people in this. It is not harsh for us to say that if you are able and willing to go out and get a job then we really would like you to do that. Take the work that is out there. There is of course work out there in many places around Australia. You can go to rural and regional Australia where they are desperate for young workers and desperate for labour, where nobody will turn up to do the jobs that are there. That is a complete mismatch of supply and demand in our economy.

There are serious challenges that we face as a government and of course it is the right starting point to fairly say to young people and to put in this amendment that, excluding all of the circumstances—and you will find a list of all the circumstances in the proposed amendment for the legislation—we will still provide a lot of support for all those young people who need it, including additional funding for people with mental health concerns.

In the first four weeks, young job seekers will be meeting with a jobactive provider, agreeing to a job plan, developing an up-to-date resume, creating a job seeker profile on the JobSearch website, providing evidence of satisfactory job search with up to 20 job applications. We have provided extra funding for hardship relief as well.

It is very strange that the Labor Party object to this four-week period considering that it is a reasonable and effective compromise that says to young people, 'We're going to give you a jobactive plan for those four weeks to go and get a job.' We are not going to abandon these people. We are not going to say 'law of the jungle,' as the member for Lilley tried to say. He referred many times to Ayn Rand. What we are about here is saying to a young person just starting out on the cusp of life: 'Don't go to the Centrelink office. Come and get a job plan. Come and get some training. Get started on the right track in life. We'll do everything possible as a government and as a society to stop you going over to Centrelink because it is not good for you ultimately.'

This is the key point that the Labor Party miss. Welfare is not good for people ultimately. It should not be something that we want people to go on. It should not be something that we force through government policy to put people on. It is not good for people ultimately. Welfare is supposed to be a safety net and a hand-up not a handout. However, in our society today we have a political party that, when in government, seem addicted to getting people onto welfare and keeping them on welfare—intergenerational welfare, poverty traps. The real property traps in our society come about from welfare traps. I think the synergies are all there for people to see.

It should be the objective of any right-thinking government to get people off welfare, to stop people going onto welfare, to do what they can reasonably to prevent it and to encourage an economy that is vibrant and producing the jobs. That comes down to the small business sector. It is why we have intertwined small business measures in this bill, because we have employment measures tied up in this. For the Labor Party to separate this legislation and this amendment, and say this is the worst thing for young people that could ever happen is exactly the wrong message to send.

As a government, we are saying: 'We're prepared to do anything possible to help you get a job. We'll pay for your education. We'll pay for your training. We'll pay for your retraining. We'll assist you with an employment plan, with a jobactive plan, with a JobReady plan. We'll assist you with your CV. We'll assist you to find a job. We'll assist you in any way possible to get out there and get that job if you are an able person.' Of course, we are taking care of those people in genuine need and those people who are unable to do so with more funding. We are taking care of them by allowing them immediate access. The categories are well thought-out from the minister. This is a very important reform. It will assist what the government is doing to get young people into work and off welfare. I believe it has the majority support of the Australian people to do just that.