Ms HALL (5:41 PM) —This government, once again, demonstrates its inability to understand the real issues that are impacting on a major policy area. It is continuing to show just how out of touch it is with the people of Australia, and how the attack it has waged on young Australians is affecting them.

John Howard and his government do not realise that the more they attack and disadvantage young Australians, the harder it is for them to find work. The problem of youth unemployment is multifaceted and one which involves an all-of-government commitment to solve. It is a problem that has caused heartache for many young Australians, their families and governments over a number of years, and it is a problem that will not simply be solved by legislating for a youth wage.

This government is prepared to legislate to discriminate against young people. It is not prepared to wait until July this year for the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to report on the feasibility of replacing junior wages with non-discriminatory alternatives such as competency base and skill levels. It is pre-empting the commission's report and recommendations and yet again showing its arrogance and inability to accept advice or consult.

Young people are one of the least powerful groups in our community, and this government has waged a constant assault against them. It has restricted their eligibility to receive benefits from Centrelink with the introduction of the youth allowance. It has increased the cost of education and made it more difficult for young people to obtain an education and, thus, get employment. It has forced them to work for the youth allowance with the Work for the Dole scheme. Every policy, every statement, every action is an attack on young people.

There has been no attempt to develop any real policies to address the issue and the causes of youth unemployment. Rather, this government has tried to hide the problem, blame young Australians and make it more difficult for them to survive. Young people are facing a real crisis in our society today and this government's answer to this is to entrench a youth wage in all awards. At a time when we have record youth unemployment, when youth suicide is increasing, when all the social indicators suggest that young people in our society need fresh new policies, this government's solution is a youth wage—introduce a youth wage and you will solve all the problems relating to youth unemployment.

This legislation will force all awards to have junior rates. I disagree with what the previous speaker was saying. It will force all awards to have junior rates of pay inserted in them. Currently, there is a number of awards that do not include junior rates of pay. This legislation will take away the discretion of the commission to omit junior rates of pay from an award. This means that many awards will have to insert junior rates. Those rates may be irrelevant, and young people will face a reduction in their pay.

In 1996, the Prime Minister promised that no person in Australia would have their wage reduced—obviously he did not mean people under the age of 21. He and his government have shown contempt for young people in every policy area. Now they are saying to young people that their work does not have the same value as that of other Australians. In other words, if you are an 18-year-old working in a restaurant, serving customers alongside a 21-year-old and doing exactly the same work, serving exactly the same number of customers with exactly the same food, your work does not have the same value as that of that 21-year-old. Similarly, if you are a 16- year-old and you are working as a labourer alongside a 45-year-old on a construction site, then your work will not be considered to be as valuable as that of the 45-year-old, even though in some cases your capacity to work and your output may be even greater.

This legislation is out of step with the United States and many other countries. In the US, youth wages only apply for the first 90 days. After that time, young people are paid at least the minimum adult wage. This recognises that young people may not have the skills initially, but it also recognises that when these skills develop the young person should be paid for the work and not according to their age.

The government has justified its legislation on the grounds that it will promote youth employment. It has argued that if employers pay young people less there will be more jobs. I have news for the government: young people are being paid less already—they have been paid less for a long time—and there are still record levels of youth unemployment.

This government's only answer to solving unemployment in Australia is to cut the wages and conditions of all workers. Today it is attacking one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australia, young Australians. Last year it was employees of small businesses. Tomorrow, who knows who it will be. There is only one thing that is certain: that it will be workers, their wages and conditions it attacks, not the employers. It does not have a balanced approach to solving the problems in our community, in our society.

Because of the government's philosophical commitment to employers, it is unable to develop a balanced approach to policies or legislation. This prevents it from investigating alternatives to cutting workers' wages and conditions. There are some really innovative alternatives out there, but when you are not prepared to look you will never find them. There are a number of studies that have shown that there is no correlation between youth wages and youth unemployment, but John Howard and his government would not consider them as they are ideologically committed to reducing workers' pay and conditions. It is a mission that they are out there to achieve.

This legislation is out of step with the current industrial relations environment where there is a move to flexible rather than prescriptive awards. Currently there is a move to enterprise agreements, and those enterprise agreements are not based on age—no, they are based on skills, competency and productivity of workers. This government has supported these moves, but it would appear that flexibility, competency and productivity are irrelevant if you are a young person. If you are under the age of 21, the only thing that matters to the government is your age, not your skill level.

This government's approach to young people is hypocritical. On the one hand, it is saying that young people are old enough to vote, old enough to join the Army, old enough to consume alcohol, old enough to purchase cigarettes and old enough to be held criminally liable for their actions at the age of 18 years, whilst on the other hand it is saying that at 18 years of age a person is not an adult when they are at work or when they are looking at any work related activity.

This government is equally as selective with the payment of Centrelink benefits to young people who are not employed. Once again, these young people are not deemed to be adults, whilst they have the same rights and obligations as adults in other areas. It would appear that this government is trying to hide its failure to address the employment needs of young people in Australia by cutting their wages, benefits and access to training and education.

What new initiative has this government introduced to help young people get a job? I have already shown that youth wages and the fact that young people receive lower wages have existed for a long time, and still there are record levels of youth unemployment. So, obviously, lower wages is not the answer. The slashing of income support has not led to increased employment for young people—once again, it is not the answer.

Cutting public education funding and cutting the funding of programs like the Students at Risk program has not improved young people's prospects or made it easier for them to get an edge in the job market. This government axed one of those Students at Risk programs in Shortland electorate, a program that worked with the most disadvantaged group of students in the community—students that had literacy problems, students that had a long history of truancy—a program that helped disadvantaged young people get the skills they needed to get a job rather than punishing them for being disadvantaged. This government axed it. Fortunately, the Carr Labor government took up the program and supported it when this government would not.

John Howard's recent announcement that all young unemployed people will have to undergo literacy assessment and lessons if they fail the literacy test is another poorly conceived strategy destined to fail. On one hand, they are not funding programs for young people when they are of an age when programs will really impact. On the other hand, they are now saying, `Okay, you cannot read and you have got poor numeracy skills, and we are going to punish you for it.' It is very ill-conceived and discriminatory.

Making university education more expensive has not led to greater job opportunities for young Australians. This government must cease adopting a reactive approach to youth unemployment and do some serious planning if it wants to reduce it and create an environment where there will be jobs growth. It is obvious that if the number of young people unable to find work is to be reduced then there must be more jobs for them. And if young people are to be able to work in these jobs they must have the necessary training and skills. That means that this government must do what governments are supposed to do: show some leadership and do some planning. It must identify the growth areas for new jobs and develop strategies to train our young Australians for these jobs. That is important. Identify the areas, plan strategies and then we are moving towards solving some of the problems that young people are having. Maintaining a failed youth wage system will not solve the problem of youth unemployment. It has not in the past; it will not in the future. This government have an opportunity to make a commitment that will ensure young people are not penalised.

As we all know, Sydney will be hosting the Olympic Games in the year 2000. This will create many new job opportunities which could be filled by young unemployed Australians if they had the training and skills that these jobs require. The government has a unique opportunity to ensure that our young Australians get these skills, and a youth wage will not deliver that to them. What I am suggesting is that the government move away from its dry economic approach which has led to so much hurt in our community and introduce programs that are sensitive to regional needs and projected job growth and where there will be an undersupply of labour in the future.

One of the first actions of this government was to slash programs that gave young people the training and skills they needed to find work. It demolished Skillshare, a program that successfully gave young people the skills they needed to find work. It axed LEAP, a program that gave young people both on-the-job and off-the-job training, a program for young people that quite often ended with them getting a permanent job. These programs were replaced with measures that penalised young people rather than programs that helped them get jobs.

This government has been intent on cutting, slashing and attacking workers and this approach has not led to more jobs or better job opportunities for young people. It will look only at one side of the equation. We have heard time and time again from speakers on the government side that it will only look at one side of the equation. It only develops policies that benefit employers. It is not committed to governing for all Australians. It is time for the government to recognise that if our society and economy is to work effectively young people must have jobs and they must receive a wage that reflects their skills and abilities—not their age.

The Howard government's ideological commitment to maintaining youth wages ignores one of the major problems facing young people working in Australia today—the problem of finding full-time work. There has been an enormous growth in part-time and casual employment in Australia, and nowhere has that impacted more than in the area of youth employment: 80 per cent of all young people can find employment only in part-time or casual work and they have no prospects of finding full-time employment.

I know of many young people who have a number of part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time employment. Full-time employment is only a dream. One young person I know has a part-time job in an office and he delivers pizza on a casual basis. He needs to do this so that he can survive. Another young person works part-time as a shop assistant, clerical assistant and driver. She must do this to survive. These are highly motivated young people, young people who value their independence, young people who do not receive any assistance and cannot receive any assistance from Centrelink—all because of changes implemented by this government. These are young people who still have to pay rent, have to eat and have to buy clothes. They have to survive and this government is not helping them in any way. Nor are its policies.

This government's legislation is condemning more and more young people to this sort of life. It is forcing them to work a multitude of jobs just to survive. I believe it is grossly unfair to pay young people, who have the same level of skills and competencies as people that are 21 years of age, a lower wage just because they are 18, 19 or 20 years of age. If you can do the job, then you should be paid at the same rate. If you do it at the same level of skill, you should be paid for the level of skill, not for the fact that you are 18 or 19 years of age.

There is no area where this government's innate unfairness is more evident than in its treatment of young Australians. This legislation will discriminate against young people just as the literacy testing will, just as the youth allowance has and just as the cuts to education and the increase in the cost of education has. And John Howard and his government will continue to place adult obligations on the group in our society that they are constantly attacking. This is bad legislation and it will not achieve its objec tives. Today, this government is attacking young people. Today, this government has chosen that group of workers to attack. Tomorrow, who knows who it will be attacking?

Any worker out there in the community is at risk of having their wages and their conditions attacked by this government, because this government has no commitment to workers. This government has no commitment to the average Australian worker who is out there striving to get money to support their family. This government is constantly attacking workers.

The young people in Australia are not benefiting in any way from the policies of this Howard government. It has shown that it has no ability to introduce innovative programs. It has no inclination to introduce programs that will address the needs of our young people. It has no inclination to develop programs that will give young people hope—programs that will reward them for the work that they do and programs that will recognise the fact that they work hard. They too should be entitled to a future like we had and they should not be penalised because of the failure of a government to develop policies that react to their needs, policies that will ensure a secure future for them and policies that will make sure young people can find jobs.