Youth Unemployment Motion

Ms WEBB (Nelson) – Mr President, I thank the member for Elwick for bringing the debate on this issue of youth unemployment to the House.

Youth unemployment across Australia remains high, consistently double the normal rate. In this respect Tasmania is no different, but we do have some particular challenges. Two reports released this year that the member for Elwick has discussed on the issue of youth unemployment unfortunately present the bleak reality for many of our young people. One report, from the Brotherhood of St Lawrence, uncovered Australia’s top 20 hotspots for youth unemployment. It found that Hobart and the north and north-west regions came in not particularly well in those rankings. We heard thirteenth and sixteenth. This means Hobart is the worst capital city in the country –

Mr Dean – From the bottom, 13th and 16th from the bottom.

Ms WEBB – This is the 20 hotspots for youth unemployment, with the highest rates. The second report is by Anglicare, an organisation I am quite familiar with. I recently came from there and was involved in producing this report in previous years. Its jobs snapshot report revealed that in Tasmania there are a high number of low-skilled jobseekers compared to the number of low-skilled jobs being advertised. The report does a snapshot on a particular weekend or period of time to see in each region how many low-skilled jobs are being advertised as available and how many jobseekers who would fit the skills profile for those jobs are in that region.

The snapshot found that Tasmania has the highest number of potential applicants from jobseekers in the country that would match the skills required for the available low-skilled jobs. There were 14 to one here in Tasmania. That is high. It does not mean there would only be 14 applicants for those jobs. It is not only the people who are minimally qualified for an advertised job who go for it. A range of people with higher levels of qualification will also be going for those jobs because of the competitive nature of the job market.

Young people are particularly at risk in that dynamic. They are particularly vulnerable because their skill level and experience level is unlikely to be as high as other applicants. My family has experience of jobseeking at the moment. A recent application went in for a relatively low-skilled job. More than 400 people applied for that job. If you were a young person applying for that job, you would have been competing against 400 plus, many of whom would have been much more qualified. You would have found yourself, I suspect, with barely a look in. They probably did not get past reading your name.

Jobs suitable for young people feel like they are becoming scarcer and harder to get. People are competing against a whole range of applicants, not just those with comparable skills and experience. Despite these difficulties, the member for Elwick makes the point that the state Government has no policy framework to tackle this issue. It calls upon them in this motion to establish a task force to undertake this function. I will speak more about that later.

The call for a policy framework rather than broad-based employment frameworks or plans or strategies is warranted. The mix of issues that feed into youth employment warrants the focus and collaborative approach that would be drawn from a specific policy framework. I appreciate the call for that. It is something I would support.

I want to talk more about the mix of issues that feed into this challenge. It would be interesting to think about those the way we think about health outcomes. One of the things we recognise in the health space is that a number of contextual factors determine whether somebody’s health outcomes are going to be more positive or more negative, and we typically call those things the social determinants of health. These are people’s social, economic and physical individual circumstances. It includes things like their income, their housing situation, their level of education, their employment status, their gender, their social connectedness and their physical environment. If we think about that idea of a determinant approach, it applies really well to the area of youth unemployment also. We can borrow that idea because we can think about the fact that there are certainly some very foundational elements in a person’s life that make it possible, particularly for a young person, either to more readily access and maintain employment or to experience barriers to accessing and maintaining employment.

Some of the examples we might be thinking about, if we are thinking about social determinants of employment for young people, would be their access to affordable housing, public transport, health care and mental health care, child care – even simple things such as their access to getting a driver licence.

In the context of youth unemployment, therefore, I wish to speak briefly about some of those issues because I think they are things that should be thought about and addressed alongside more narrowly targeted jobs policies. They are also the reason that warrants us talking about a policy framework on this issue and thinking about the value of a task force approach to addressing it.

First, I will speak briefly about housing. Many people here know I am a passionate advocate for social and affordable housing in this state. Housing is a bedrock of a successful society. It disturbs me deeply that we continue to find ourselves in such a dire housing situation with so many Tasmanians simply unable to access an affordable home. This is a crisis that has affected many of our friends, family and neighbours. It is not least, really, that the dramatic and quite dire impact of it is felt by young Tasmanians. We know this because of the 3300 or so people on Tasmania’s public housing waiting list, around 1000 are under 25 years of age. That is 1000 young Tasmanians who qualify for housing support to live in public or social housing, and we cannot provide them with an affordable home through our public or social housing system at this time. They are left then to face that situation in the private rental market or, in many cases, are facing homelessness because we are not currently able to provide them with access to a safe and affordable home that they are eligible to receive.

We know that young people will be a significant cohort in the private rental market. Tasmania’s tenancy laws are now some of the weakest in the country. Specifically, our tenancy laws provide virtually no protection from substantial regular rent increases. That means that we have seen exactly that in recent years: young renters have commonly faced rent hikes of $100 a week from one rental agreement to the next – that is coming to the end of a lease, renewing a lease into a new lease period and the rent goes up by $100. There is nothing to stop that happening in our tenancy laws if the landlord can make an argument that this is market rent. Because we know that property prices and the rental market have gone gangbusters here, everyone has just bumped up each other’s rents. We would commonly experience hearing from people in our community who are experiencing these enormous jumps in their rent, year after year, as they enter into new rental agreements.

Mr Valentine – You have to bring in new flatmates to help pay for it.

Ms WEBB – Other jurisdictions tackle this in a range of ways. Sometimes there is a maximum amount that can be increased at any given time, or a proportion of the rent that can be increased at any given time. It is a good conversation for us to have for another day about ways we can improve protections in our Residential Tenancy Act, given the private rental market here at the present time.

We also know that the private rental market is becoming incredibly competitive because of a whole range of factors, one of which we are also due to talk about in this Chamber, the short-stay accommodation market, which has made an impact in that area, particularly in the Greater Hobart area. Private rental stock is being depleted by the shifting of properties into the short-stay accommodation market. This affects everybody in Tasmania – families, older people and, particularly, young people who are very vulnerable, and it is simply unacceptable.

The member for Elwick outlined in detail the rates young people receive in their income support payments through our Centrelink system. They are low – they are so low as to be untenable. Another report I was regularly involved in – in my prior role with Anglicare – was the annual Rental Affordability Snapshot. Certainly, for the three years I was involved in doing that report about Tasmania and I believe it occurred again this year in the most recent report. When we did a snapshot of rental properties available in this state on a weekend in April – which includes units, houses, rooms in share houses, every sort of rental offered – not one single property, including rooms in share houses, could be regarded as affordable for a young person on Youth Allowance. It has been the case for years now. In that snapshot report, not a single property could be deemed affordable.

That is a dire situation that means even the sorts of living arrangements typically available to young people or student share house living is now stretched beyond what could be deemed affordable and reasonable for them. I have spoken about housing at length here and know it is not about housing, but it is very hard to get a job if you do not have a safe and secure home you can afford to live in and afford to use as your home base for going about the rest of your life, including education, training and employment.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the context of the determinants of employment. Social determinacy is a more direct one, and we would assume a link with education. The link between education and employment in many ways is quite obvious but also warrants mentioning in a few particular ways. Through a robust education system, we provide all Tasmanian children and young people with the ability to go on and into good employment situations and deliver good outcomes for themselves personally, but also for our state.

Tasmania has historically has had some of the lowest student retention rates. I am disheartened to see we still seem to be hovering in the vicinity of around the lowest and at the moment we have the second lowest rate in the country. Understandably, this has prompted action by government, which is excellent to see. Steps are being taken to tackle this exact issue and I welcome the work being done. Actually, by successive governments, but particularly by this Government, there has been a lot of focus around the years 9 to 12 and the extension of high schools has been mentioned to some extent today. It may serve well some young people to assist them complete their education and move through to employment. That is a critical time to keep young people involved in education and employment and efforts to do that are really welcome.

One thing I am familiar with – again from previous roles – in a way bookends that year 9 to 12 focus is that we have also made efforts, across a few successive governments over the last 10 years, to build up and really invest in early years education. We have done quite well at bookending school with good efforts in investment in and results from focusing on early years education, and in recent times good progress, efforts and investment around years 9 to 12. Over the last few years one thing is that we seem to have dropped the ball still in the middle. In terms of ultimate outcomes for the most vulnerable children in our community, we have to plug that gap in a much more focused way with much greater investment. We saw that through the policy and research work done in the community sector. In the spaces in which I worked, children in particularly vulnerable families begin their disengagement from school in the mid-to-late primary school years. The member for Elwick, with his background and experience, will probably concur with this. Children from vulnerable families experiencing a range of challenges would begin to not participate in their educational pathway from about the age of 10 onwards.

That would be coupled with a whole range of other factors in their lives, such as disengagement at home, experiences of trauma and abuse at home and homelessness. The problem is we do not meet those challenges well. Our efforts in years 9 and 12 are not going to touch them because they definitely will not be at school by the time they get to that age group. We have lost them already.

Mr Willie – Given the trajectory of some of those kids – and I know them well, particularly in the northern suburbs – it almost requires an emergency response. If we do not rush there to wrap around that child and re-engage them and get them through, they continue on that trajectory.

Ms WEBB – That is exactly right. We are miserably failing highly vulnerable children in those middle years. We have absolutely no response to unaccompanied homeless children under the age of 13. If children aged 10 to 13 are homeless and unaccompanied in this state, we have nothing to offer them in the way of care and support. If a 12-year-old presents to a shelter in this state as an unaccompanied homeless child, the shelter has to turn them away. That is the situation we are in.

Mr Willie – There is a government task force on unaccompanied youth at the moment.

Ms WEBB – Indeed we have one.

Ms Forrest – Maybe they could include them in the other discussions.

Ms WEBB – They would be a stakeholder. I am getting a bit distracted, but that is partly because this issue has many different factors. It is not as simple as focusing narrowly on creating jobs or particular types of employment and training. There many other things associated with a young person’s ability to access and maintain work.

I was going to speak briefly about our VET system. Our TAFE system is crucial to getting young people into the workforce and some additional funding has been committed. I believe that follows from an erosion of that space by state and federal governments over recent years. I hope the reinvestment by the state Government is not just a bandaid for what has happened in recent times but will be enough to take us into a more positive situation.

At the federal level Senator Jacqui Lambie is a champion and strong voice for more investment in vocational education and training and TAFE facilities.

Housing and education undoubtedly play strong roles in a young person’s ability to find work. I would also like to look at three specific issues that could be addressed in the short term. They would come within the remit of a task force if they were to give a holistic, focused approach to this issue.

The three things I would like to talk about very briefly are improving driver licence access, improving access to child care and improving the way we deliver employment services to young people. Getting a driver licence is often one of the most liberating moments we experience in our lives. I was pretty late coming to it. Parents generally appreciate the moment when their children get their licence because you no longer need to wear the taxi hat. That feeling of liberation is even more strongly felt here in Tasmania because having a licence and a car is particularly important given our geographical spread and limited public transport options. Having a licence is beneficial socially as well for employment or education and training.

It is disappointing that in Tasmania young people are facing lengthy waiting times to simply sit their test to get their licence. I believe just a few months ago The Mercury profiled a young man who was shut out of a job because he simply was stuck waiting to get his licence and the job that he was potentially able to get required him to have one.

Mr Willie – I can report that he has now found an apprenticeship. I think he has to resit for his driver’s licence again, but he is my constituent and I know him well.

Ms WEBB – A lot of people take more than one go at it.

Mr Willie – Yes, but it is good news that he has found an apprenticeship, and I think they are prepared to wait the month it is going to take. It is good news. He is very capable.

Ms WEBB – Again, this is another reason you do not want long waits. That is fantastic news. That is a very good news story, thank you, member for Elwick.

That young man is clearly not alone. I believe that has prompted the Government to take action to fix waiting times, to some extent. One thing that concerns me about that, and I was a bit dismayed to read that potentially the policy response involved in trying to fix waiting times was to open up driver assessments to the private sector. That is a type of approach we have seen before: underfund good public services to the point where they break and they are not meeting the needs of the community and then move to a privatisation model as a solution. I hope that does not happen in this space.

Mr Willie – It has.

Ms WEBB – That is very disappointing then. I think it would be a shame –

Mr Valentine – It is then an issue of quality control.

Ms WEBB – There are all kinds of issues that come into play once you have privatised a service which could have readily been delivered by the Government if they had funded it adequately in the first place. However, I am going to move on from that.

You have that direct link there between driver licences, cars and access, and getting a job for some people. There is another issue I think does not get the same level of attention in terms of it being a direct enabler of accessing employment, and that is young mothers and their access to child care and their ability to get a job if they have access to adequate and affordable child care.

I thank the member for Murchison for the attention she provided in her speech to gender considerations relating to this issue and some of those matters she highlighted. This is quite a particular one that fits in the same vein. Child care does not have to be an issue that relates just to women and girls. It is an issue that ultimately, I hope, relates equally to men and boys. At the moment, we still face a situation, particularly for young women who may also be mothers, that child care tends to fall on them as a responsibility and therefore on them as an issue to solve in terms of their employment prospects.

I note a report done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers on the importance of tackling the high number of NEETs in Australia. NEET is a term used to describe someone who is Not in Education, Employment or Training. In the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report, it was interesting to see – for a number of reasons but it would be very interesting to consider for a task force – the range of matters discussed in that report. One of the things I did note here is that it is estimated that one in 10 young people in Australia have NEET status and that within that number, young women are over represented. This report argued that one of the most effective ways of tackling the issue of NEET young people is to target young women by improving their access to child care.

We need to think about a holistic response to these issues that sit around a young person’s ability in terms of different sorts of situations around gender.

We know that Australia has relatively high childcare costs. Many young women in the community would like to work but find that the lack of affordable child care is a significant barrier.

I am going to talk very briefly about employment services. I wish to talk about them because we can really improve the way we deliver employment services to young people. Some of the reports and evidence mentioned today highlight this issue as well. I note the member for Elwick spoke in his initial contribution about the effective partnership in the Sorell municipality that tackles this with a new collaborative approach, providing employment support to people in a very local and focused way.

I also highlight a local program run by Colony 47 in Hobart that is doing a really fantastic job of getting young people into work. Young people, through that program, are provided with one-to-one mentoring to help them access, or train towards, work. It is supported by the federal government’s Transition to Work initiative. It is a program making real and positive change in helping over 100 young people in Hobart find work or get into training. That should be really celebrated. This program through Colony 47 and the partnership collaboration mentioned by the member for Elwick and highlighted in the media recently are ways of thinking creatively and holistically about how we can best support people. There are ways we could do this with particular focus around young people and bring that holistic response.

I restate my support for the member for Elwick’s motion. I support the idea of a youth jobs task force. There are a range of challenges and barriers relating to the issue. We need to tackle them holistically. A task force idea really gives a sense of urgency and momentum, but also positive action. The member for Elwick mentioned a range of stakeholders who may be involved in such a task force. I very much appreciated the member for Murchison’s focus on the need to involve young people themselves in such a task force. This is an essential ingredient and would assist to make sure the work of a task force did not drift into irrelevance and away from some of the core issues that sit around the idea of work for young people.

I thank the member for Elwick for providing the opportunity to discuss this issue. It is a really important one for our state. I recognise the efforts the Government has and is undertaking in the space, but I absolutely emphasise the opportunity to do more. I appreciate the suggestion put forward of a policy framework and a task force to do this.

More parliamentary speeches by Hon Meg Webb MLC