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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 735 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I am entering this debate today to express my lack of support for this proposal. I and my office have considered this work for the dole scheme very carefully and I am not convinced of its merits. I think the Standing Committee on Education has produced a very good report and I thank them for it.

I have been tempted to allow the Government's proposal to go through to the keeper, Mr Speaker. After all, as Mr Stefaniak has said, this proposal is not being forced on schools and many schools are happy for any warm body to help them out. There are a number of reasons why I am no longer prepared to do that.

Firstly, I am not a true believer in the work for the dole scheme. It tends to reinforce generalisations about the long-term unemployed as being bludgers, as being unwilling to look for work or to create opportunities for their employment, and blames them for being in their situation. Clearly, it was not the brainchild of someone who had themselves been unemployed and was convinced that this type of experience would have got them a job.

Secondly, I have sought advice from the schools in my electorate over the past month or so and have found no support for it. I have written to every government school principal in Brindabella and not one has said back to me, "I want this program in my school". Not one. Thirdly, I tend to agree with the committee that, rather than being of assistance to schools, it could easily become a drain on them.

I accept that in its current form this is not a vocational proposal. I wish it were, though, Mr Speaker. As a work experience program only, it attracts little in the way of training assistance. I recall the report stating the figure of $350 per participant for training. I hold grave doubts about whether this is anywhere near enough to ensure that participants would be adequately trained to work in schools amongst our young children and assist them to find work. The evidence received by the committee strongly suggested that schools would need to provide significant on-the-job training, adding to the workload of already busy school staff.

Mr Speaker, I am a big supporter of traineeship vocational programs, but not just things being proposed like this. In recent years we have had these types of programs operating in our schools. I understand they worked very well. Their key element was adequate training. Working alongside children is not the same as clearing scrub from railway tracks or trimming hedges. It is a specialised occupation which takes more than just a couple of days orientation. Just placing work for the dole participants in a school environment would make some level of contact with children inevitable, and I believe that this program prepares neither its participants nor the schoolchildren for that experience.

Like the majority of committee members, I am prepared to support programs that result in young people being placed in meaningful activities, that offer accredited training, real opportunities for work and which are well supported. I do not believe that this proposal achieves any of these objectives. Rather, I agree with the committee that this scheme has the potential to be detrimental to both schools and the young unemployed participants.

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