Right now, young people are getting screwed.
Year after year, successive Labor and Liberal
governments have been making life harder for
young people. They have managed the economy
in the interests of the few, instead of in
the interests of everyone. And it is getting
harder and harder for young people to get
a job, as youth unemployment is high, and
it has doubled over the general unemployment
rate. The jobs that young people often do
get are very highly insecure and often not
well paid at all.
Study is getting less and less affordable,
because university and TAFE are getting more
expensive. The dream of owning your own home
is getting further and further out of reach,
with Australian house prices skyrocketing
and incomes stagnant. Yet the government is
not doing anything about this. In fact, if
the government has its way the problem for
young people will get much, much worse. If
right now young people are getting screwed,
if the government gets its plans through they
will be right royally stuffed.
Let's have a look at the current situation.
Youth unemployment is at nearly 13 per cent.
That is more than double the general national
rate. An Anglicare report that was recently
released found that only one job is advertised
for every six low-skilled jobseekers, who
are often young people who have not had the
opportunity to gain much work experience.
Getting a job can be even harder for people
living in a regional area or for people from
non-English speaking backgrounds. Young people
in Melbourne have told me that if they put
'Mohammed' in their CV and they send off their
job application, they hear nothing; but when
they change their name to 'David', the phone
starts ringing.
And increasingly there are fewer entry level
jobs available for young people, making it
harder for young people to get their foot
in the door, to build their skills and experience,
to establish a career, to gain independence,
and to plan and progress their lives. The
youth unemployment rate is always higher than
the general unemployment rate, and in some
respects that makes sense; young people are,
as a whole, doing other things, whereas older
people tend to be more likely to look for
work.
What we also know, as a general historical
trend, is that every time there is an economic
downturn, we strike hard times or there is
a recession young people are hardest hit first.
The lines of the youth unemployment rate and
the general unemployment rate diverge when
we reach hard times, and it becomes proportionately
harder for young people to find work. The
youth unemployment rate for them skyrockets.
What we have also found historically over
Australia's history is that those two lines,
after a year or so, tend to converge again
and it becomes easier for young people to
find work. Since the GFC that has not happened
in Australia. For young people the line has
stayed higher. Since the GFC it has become
harder proportionately than at any other time
in history for young people to get back into
work. The entry-level jobs since the GFC are
disappearing. Those jobs that you might walk
into straight out of school or that you might
walk into if you do not finish school are
disappearing. The jobs that this government
wants young people to get just are not being
created any more in the way that they used
to, and it is a national crisis.
So what is this government's response? Rather
than listening to expert advice on how to
tackle youth unemployment or invest in new
industries that might create those jobs for
the future, the Liberals have taken it upon
themselves to be every young Australian's
tough parent, serving up some tough love by
telling them to pull themselves up by their
bootstraps and earn or learn. Their first
plan was to kick young people off Newstart,
which is itself so low that it is below the
poverty line and is a barrier to people finding
work, because you do not have that money to
invest in yourself—to get some training,
to buy the new clothes for the job interview,
to even get a haircut. Their first plan was
to kick people off Newstart and make them
wait six weeks before they can receive this
measly payment to try and support themselves.
Luckily, the Senate took a stand for young
people and refused to pass this ridiculous
measure. Yet, the Liberals are refusing to
listen, saying they only want to make young
people wait four weeks before they can get
Newstart. Well, four weeks—the landlord
does not care that you do not have money coming
from the government to pay the rent, the public
transport does not care that you do not have
money because it is the government's fault.
But the government's approach is still to
say, 'Well, we'll deal with the national youth
unemployment crisis by making life tougher
for young people.'
At the same time the government wants to make
learning more expensive, less accessible and
more exclusive by cutting support for students
and deregulating our universities—a move
that experts have warned could see the creation
of US-style $100,000 degrees. So it is harder
to earn by getting a job because, under this
government and since the GFC, the jobs are
not there in the same way, it is more expensive
to try and learn, and even if you are lucky
enough to get a job and to keep it and to
earn an income, owning your home is becoming
a pipedream.
In 1990 house prices were approximately six
times a young person's income. In 2013 that
had doubled to approximately 12 times a young
person's income. It is not the fault of smashed
avocados that housing is becoming increasingly
unaffordable for people. Even if you find
a job and even if you find a secure job—which
is pretty tough to do these days—the ratio
of your income to house prices is just skyrocketing.
And that has happened under the watch of Liberal
and Labor. The old parties' policies of allowing
negative gearing to happen and the capital
gains tax discount to continue turned housing
into an unproductive investment class, and
it caused an explosion in house prices, meaning
that overwhelmingly the only people who could
afford to buy a house are those who already
have one.
The government should be making it easier
for people to buy their first home not helping
people who already have one to buy their second,
third or fourth. The Grattan Institute found
that under these and other government policies
real wealth held by older households from
2003 through to 2012 grew by $215,000, but
for younger households it went backwards.
In 1994 young households had nearly 10 percent
of the country's wealth, but by 2014 that
had effectively halved to 5.5 per cent. So
over 20 years young people went from having
10 per cent of the country's wealth to having
about five per cent. At the same time it dramatically
increased for older generations. This is why
young people are getting screwed: successive
governments have worked against them, dealing
them an increasingly bad hand and growing
intergenerational inequality. Governments
have allowed the economy to run rampant and
to screw young people.
The good news is that as a society we are
becoming more and more aware of just how much
young people are getting screwed. Academics,
think tanks and civil society organisations
are all pointing out how the odds are no longer
in young people's favour and how, under Liberal
and Labor, we may be creating a situation
where we are leaving the economy and household
budgets and the planet worse off for generations
that come after us rather than better. But
the bad news is that the government are refusing
to look at the bigger picture and are refusing
to listen. They are being the unreasonable
parent instead of listening to their children
or experts, having blind faith that they know
what is best—that is, to make people work
for either nothing or next to nothing. If
it were a lesson on safe sex, this is a government
that would be pushing abstinence not condoms.
If it were a lesson on good behaviour, this
is a government that would be sending young
people to their rooms rather than talking
the issue through.
Instead of working systematically to even
the odds and deliver a better deal for young
people, on budget night this year the Liberals
unveiled their master plan for getting young
people a job—this Prepare, Trial, Hire scheme.
What it really meant, though, was that earn
or learn became burn and churn. Essentially,
this government's plan to tackle high youth
unemployment and help young people get a job
is to lure them to work for below the minimum
wage. The Liberals' plan will not provide
secure and meaningful work for the hundreds
of thousands of young people who are unemployed.
What will do is drive down wages for other
workers and see employers burn and churn through
young people. In fact, it could see people
currently working in these roles kicked out
in favour of free money and labour, courtesy
of the government.
Under the program being enabled by this bill,
by not having to hire someone at the usual
wage employers could bank more per week than
the young people who are supposedly going
to get a job. In other words, this scheme
will allow employers, on the public purse,
to take home more money than the young people
who are going to be forced to work under it.
The Greens do not accept that to get young
people into work they need to be paid as little
as $4 an hour, which is well below the minimum
wage. That is what this scheme is about.
Following the government's unveiling of this
flagship program, the Secretary of the Australian
Council of Trade Unions said 'this internship
program is a path to nowhere' and 'gives business
access to free, exploitable workers'. He asked:
Why would a business employ a minimum wage
or lower paid worker when the government is
ready to supply them with free labour and
a $1000 handout?
He pointed out that these internships could
include low-skilled work such as work in supermarkets,
which is not a plan to create real, lasting
jobs. It is simply substituting existing low-paid
labour with even cheaper, government subsidised
labour rather than creating new jobs.
Let us be clear about this: internships, if
they are structured correctly, can be a good
thing. They can provide opportunities for
young people to learn and build their skills.
We have had internships for a very long time.
Every political party in this place, I am
sure, offers internships. Community groups
offer internships. Organisations like community
groups and political parties thrive on getting
young people involved, but when we do it—and
I speak here on behalf of the Greens—we
do not offer out hope to people that this
is some pathway to secure employment; it is
about you and increasing your skills. You
are not here doing government subsidised work
where you are required to turn up at a particular
time and clock off at a particular time. It
is not a false job—because that is not what
an internship is or should be. But when you
ask people, as the government is doing under
this program, to clock on and clock off and
get the equivalent of $4 an hour while they
hold out hope of a secure job, and you pay
employers $1,000 from the public purse to
put them on and displace other workers, that
is not a scheme to create lasting employment.
The simple fact is this: this is a flawed
plan dreamt up in isolation by a government
that thinks it knows best, but it will not
help people find secure long-term work. In
fact, it could just see handouts to business
to force young people to work for below the
minimum wage and potentially force people
from a job who are currently working in these
roles. There is nothing in this bill that
provides protection for someone currently
working in a low-paid job from being forced
out of that job by this new scheme so that
government subsidised cheap labour can come
in instead.
We have to take action to help make life easier
for young people. That means tackling rising
job insecurity and tackling housing unaffordability,
but this program will not do that. If we were
serious, we would be investing in education.
We would be investing in big job-creating
projects that will provide secure work for
young people—like public transport and clean
energy. We would be making it easier for people
to get into education and complete it and
we would end the unfair tax breaks that are
pushing up the cost of housing and pricing
young people out of the market. And we have
to do it now because otherwise we run the
risk of locking an entire generation out of
secure work and locking an entire generation
out of owning their own home.
