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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4194 ..

Children from families where there is no working parent are particularly likely to become unemployed after leaving school. An ABS study conducted in the 1990s found that the unemployment rate for young people between the ages of 15 and 24 was 20 per cent if they were living with both parents and at least one of those parents was employed. This compared with 36 per cent unemployment for young people with no employed parent in the household, and 43 per cent for young people living with a sole unemployed parent. Could you imagine the outcry if our unemployment rate sat at 43 per cent? But this is the reality for a certain group of young people within our community. So for these reasons, we should be doing what we can to support young people, who are at risk of dropping out of the education system, to at least find part-time work outside school hours so that they can start building a work history.

Of course, there are other benefits from young people being involved in the employment sector. Part-time work provides young people with a part-time income, and that extra money opens up opportunities for many kids from low-income families. It is a sad fact that forming and sustaining friendships in the teenage years costs money, and young people who can’t afford to participate in social activities often become marginalised and bullied. They are likely to become truant or just drop out of school altogether because they cannot afford to participate in the excursions; they cannot afford to participate in the social activities that are part of the cohort, a part of their friendship growth. So they end up with limited social connections.

Overseas research has shown that kids with part-time work are actually happier because they can afford to participate in social activities, including sport; they’re able to actually buy their own clothes; they don’t feel that they’re putting an extra burden on their parents by continually asking for support to participate in school excursions or to get new things. Getting these young people into weekend jobs can help keep them in school, and this is what studies have actually shown.

Having a regular income also teaches young people how to budget and save, which is an essential life skill. Most children from low-income families don’t receive their own pocket money, and it’s pocket money that helps start children set and achieve goals to buy larger items. I’m sure it is a tool that many parents in this Assembly have used themselves.

But for many disadvantaged young people, it is a job that provides them with a regular income for the first time; it is a job through which they actually get the knowledge about how to save up funding, about the value of money. It’s not inherent, the value of a coin or the value of a note; it is something that does need to be learned; and we need to support young people to take on these life skills.

We already have vocational training being delivered in our schools—and this education is available from year 9 onward—but it is geared towards future full-time employment, not to gaining the skills required for part-time employment to meet those immediate financial and social needs. I fully support the vocational education programs that are happening in our schools, but they are directed at what will happen when the young person leaves school; they are looking at the long-term future. The motion that I move today looks at the immediate circumstances of young people and what we can do to help them in that immediate way that will pay off in the long term.

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