Mr KERR(11.30 a.m.) —One of the things of substance that has not emerged in this discussion about these changes to support for young unemployed people is what they will do in terms of the shift between public and private education. The truth is that you inject large numbers of people into an education system where they know they are going to get no benefit, save that that is their only means of having income support and the only way in which their families can sustain their children with any form of commitment. The unemployment circumstances are such that they cannot find employment and this government is going to refuse them the opportunities to seek employment and to improve their employability through labour market programs or access to unemployment benefits.

If you force those unwilling participants into an already overcrowded state education system, then people will naturally say that that will degrade that state education system. They will not be going into private education because they do not have the means. The only sector of the education system they will be able to access is the already overcrowded and underfunded state education system. That will then carry the baggage of unwilling participants. Teachers will be baby-sitting large numbers of people who will be getting no benefit and whose parents know they are getting no benefit. Those who wish to participate to gain benefit out of the education system will increasingly have to choose to fund their children's education in the private sector.

As well as the natural damage that is occurring to Australia's families, we will get the pressure that this will place on family breakdown and the consequences it will mean for the impoverishment of many families who will not wish to force their children into this stupid position. As well as that, we will find that it will degrade the state education systems around Australia. Years 11 and 12 will be carrying unwilling, unwelcome participants. They will be therefore unattractive to people who have the funds to escape from those systems. They will move into the private education system.   Increasingly, we get a two-tier system of education where you get quality education only if you pay for it. Of course, that is being matched with a funding regime that increasingly benefits those newly established independent schools. Schools will be established in places where there is no check that they will not damage the participation of the public educational sector and where the transfer costs, as they emerge, will gut the effectiveness of the public education system.

What we are actually doing is trying to hide unemployment. This government is trying to hide unemployment by shifting it into forcing people into years 11 and 12 education when we, as the former government, had already increased participation to a degree which was hitherto unknown in Australia. We were actually getting people going through higher education. Now we will force unwilling participants, who will not be capable of benefiting from it, into that system. That will degrade that public education system. It will continue the transfer and shift of people out of public education into private education. A class-ridden outcome, where wealth dictates your success in life, emerges as the likely outcome.

That is what you can predict as a result of these very stupid changes. The only motivating factor that underlies them is a desire to obscure the fact that this government has nothing to offer to young Australians, who they bleated about before the last election as being their object of primary concern. Before the last election, the high rate of unemployed in that sector who were not participating in the education system was identified as this government's number one priority.

What do they do in government? They turn on those very people. They offer them no employment opportunities. They offer them no effective training opportunities. They park them in an educational system for which they cannot gain a benefit because that system is not designed to operate as a technical or further education system. It is not designed to increase job readiness. They will park them there, they will degrade that system's effectiveness, and they will increase the shift of people from the public sector to the private sector. This is retrograde and stupid as far as Australia's national interests are concerned. (Time expired)