Senator NEAL (10:15 AM) —by leave—I move:

That the House of Representatives be requested to make the following amendments:

(12) Schedule 2, item 8, page 172 (after line 9), third flow chart box on the left, omit "$230", substitute "the person's ordinary income free area".

(14) Schedule 2, item 8, page 174 (lines 3 to 9), omit "$230" (wherever occurring), substitute "the person's ordinary income free area".

(15) Schedule 2, item 8, page 174 (lines 10 to 17), omit "$230" (wherever occurring), substitute "the person's ordinary income free area".

The general thrust of these three amendments is to extend the provision presently contained within the legislation for the benefit of students to another group—the young unemployed. You might recall that, previously, the social security legislation for students had provision for a yearly income test which had similar effects to this, but this is the first time the income test as such—as an income bank—has been included in the legislation. I think it is a very good move.

In most cases students are allowed to earn $230 a fortnight before their Austudy, or youth allowance in this case, is affected. If they earn a larger amount, they can extend it, over a longer period, to allow them to still access the allowance. In the normal lifestyle of a student, that would allow them to work intensively during the vacation period and earn in excess of $230 per fortnight but then to earn nothing, or very little, during the normal studying period and to even out their income over the year so that it is not detrimentally affected. That obviously gives a lot of benefit to students. It ensures that they can maximise their income earning capacity during the vacation periods and maximise their time for studying during the semester periods. I really have to say it is a very positive step. The effect of our amendments is to try to extend this mechanism to unemployed young people—of course, that would include those young people who are presently being case managed.

The provision now for young people is that they can only earn $30 a week before their youth allowance is lowered and, for many people, $30 a week is not a great deal of money. I suppose there may well be an acceptance in the community that if you are earning more than that amount your reliance on the community should be reduced.

What I am concerned about and what the amendments are aimed at is that, with the way that work practices are and with the present level of unemployment, sometimes access to employment may only be in very short bursts. I do not believe that it is unusual for a young person to be offered employment for, say, a short period of one or two weeks. That person would obviously earn substantially in excess of the $30 a week. What I am concerned about is that we, as a community, want to maximise the possibility of that young person ultimately being employed—hopefully in a career that they enjoy—and that the best way of ensuring that they eventually enter full-time and ongoing employment is that they obtain some sort of work experience. It is really not a very unusual story to hear from young people that their biggest impediment to getting work is that, when they apply for the job and are asked what experience they have, their answer is none. I do not think that is through any fault of their own. You have to start somewhere.

By allowing the income bank to be applied to those young people, I am not suggesting in any way that their income-free area should be extended beyond the $30 a week but they should be able to average it out over time. If they, say, get a couple of weeks employment but then are unemployed for a substantial period, their income should be evened out so that their youth allowance is not affected. I think this would be a very useful mechanism to emphasise to young people that they should take up work, even if it is only for a very short period, and to encourage them to gain that sort of short-term experience in the hope that, ultimately, that will serve them in good stead in getting long-term work. It is unfortunate but, with our present levels of unemployment and in particular our levels of unemployment for young people, it is often extraordinarily difficult for young people to get work, and we should be assisting in any way we can.

I suppose what the minister may say in response is that we cannot be too lenient—that if they are earning above the $30 a week, their youth allowance should be reduced. But, in terms of encouraging young people to get that work experience, I am prone to lean on the side of leniency and to say that it is more important to get them back to work in the long term than it is to apply strictly an income-free zone without exception in the short term. One of the great problems that has been developing—only in the last three to five years, maybe less, it seems to me—is that of long-term unemployment. I do not mean that in the technical sense of over two years. I am talking about people who are unemployed, with few skills, little experience and a limited expectation of ever being employed. This group starts at 18—not at an older age—and, with each passing year that they remain unemployed and without work experience, the chances increase of their ultimately becoming one of the entrenched long-term unemployed. I plead very strongly with the Senate to consider these requests for amendment care fully, to vote for them and for giving unemployed young people a better opportunity of gaining experience and of ultimately being gainfully employed.