Page 533 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 1993
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Above all it -
that is, the Government -
must recognise that solutions to youth unemployment will not ultimately be found in the provision of short term support and training programs, but in the creation of jobs ... it must seek to generate sustainable solutions which aim to recover jobs for young people.
It also went on to say:
... begin discussions on wages and conditions for young people and seek to ensure that Commonwealth and state bodies implement a system of wages based on the level of skill rather than age.
In the Canberra Times on 16 January 1992 the ACTU - the Australian Council of Trade Unions - was quoted as being maybe ready to agree to the Federal Government introducing a so-called training wage. That was exactly what the Chief Minister's Youth Advisory Council was seeking. What has happened?
Mr De Domenico: When was that done?
MR CORNWELL: That was a month after the Youth Advisory Council made the statement, Mr De Domenico. What has happened? The unions are not going to object. What has Ms Follett's Government done? Nothing whatsoever. In the meantime, the ACT continues to have the highest youth unemployment in Australia, rising from March 1992 when it was 19.7 per cent to January 1993 when it was 39.2 per cent. The cost of one young person on the dole is $181.10 per fortnight, on average, but we must also look at the cost in a much broader sense. We have to look at it in terms of the social cost, in terms of self-esteem, in terms of respect, of encouragement and incentive, of being idle. There are the problems associated with drugs and alcohol, and of vandalism.
If my friend Mr Connolly would care to go out and have a look at some of his Housing Trust flat complexes one day about midday, not surrounded by his flunkeys, but just quietly with one or two staffers, he would start to see a lot of young people appearing around those areas. Why? Because they are just getting up. They have no jobs; they have no future. What is the point of getting up at 8 o'clock in the morning when you have nothing to look forward to for that day? Go and have a look sometime. It brings home to you very strongly the terrible effects of unemployment on our young people; yet your Government has done nothing whatsoever to assist, to tackle this problem. A voluntary service scheme, for example, has been recommended by Archbishop Hollingworth, the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane. Even that would be a start. It would at least occupy these young people and give them some opportunity to put themselves to work. They may not be being paid a large amount of money but at least they would be getting something out of it. At least they would be getting some self-respect.
I repeat that, so far as this Labor Government is concerned or the Federal Labor Government is concerned, they have failed abysmally to treat the horrendous level of unemployment as a No. 1 priority. On 13 March the Federal Labor Government deserves to be cast into the trash heap of history for this alone.
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