Mr LLOYD (1:01 PM) —I am pleased to rise today in this place to speak in support of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998. I have listened with interest to the contributions of the members opposite. It disappoints me, because the Labor Opposition seems to be living in a time warp. They want to go back to the 1950s, they want to live in the past. This amendment bill seeks to make this legislation effective for today's small business people, for the industrial relations process that is in place in today's work force and in today's workplace.

If this bill is not passed, it could jeopardise the employment of 300,000 young Australians. I have spent most of my working life in small business. I understand how small business works. I understand the opportunities that are there for young people to be employed in many roles within small business. I also understand that if junior pay rates were abolished, many of these small businesses would not choose to employ juniors, to employ young people, when they have to pay the full adult wage rate.

Young people just out of school may have no experience; they may never have had a job before. The employers have to teach them the work; in many cases they have to teach them the work ethic, which is a reflection of Australian society over the last decade. Often the employers are repaid many times over by those young people in future years. But in the initial stages a lot of time and effort has to be put into those young people to make them valuable employees. Why would employers employ young 16- or 17-year-olds and pay them the full adult wage if they could just go out and employ a well trained, competent adult who could walk straight into the job and do the job efficiently? The simple answer is that they would not do that.

I am speaking from experience. I am not being driven by ideology. I am talking about hands-on experience. I spent five years on a cruise ship called Lady Hawkesbury, a 68-metre vessel which employed a crew of 28 people. I was originally employed as a crew member and left five years later as master of that vessel. Most of the crew that we had on that vessel were young Central Coast kids—people who in many cases had never had a job before, but were keen to enter the tourism industry. We employed young people as waitresses, bar staff, deckhands, dishwashers, galley hands; there was a whole range of employment on board that vessel.

Over the five years we employed several hundred young people. Those young people employed as deckhands—`deck boys' was the classification—were all members of the firemen and deckhands union. They were employed on junior pay rates, and they took up a lot of our time. They were young 16-year-olds who left home and came to live on board the vessel. We were on board for two week shifts, then back home for a week. We had to train them not only in work skills but also in lifestyle skills, in many cases.

A number of those young people have now got their deep sea masters certificates and are working on ocean going vessels. A couple of them are masters of ocean going vessels. They started off with nothing. If we were not able to employ them on board that vessel at junior rates of pay, the simple fact is that our boss would not have taken the time to employ them and invest money in training them when he could have been paying experienced ship persons the full adult rate, and they would have continued in the industry.

The point that I am trying to make is that junior pay rates are a start for young people. We are talking about high youth unemployment. I have listened with interest to the genuine concern of members opposite about high youth unemployment. It is a difficult issue. I do not think that anyone should stand in this place and say they have the magic answer. We now have youth unemployment down to levels that, whilst still far too high, are running at around 27 per cent. I think the last figures were 24 per cent nationwide. That is certainly a lot better than the previous figure of 32 per cent. The way to continue to reduce that figure is to allow this legislation to go through the House.

Over half the employees aged under 21 are covered by junior rates, with almost a third of these being employed in the retail trade, which is obviously the most significant and important industry as far as youth employment is concerned.

The AIRC inquiry is currently looking into junior pay rates. I read with interest the ACCI submission, put forward mainly by the retail and fast food industries, which put the case to retain the age based pay rates for juniors. The submission makes a number of points relating to the retention of junior rates:

. Youth unemployment is already high, and the onus on those supporting the removal of junior rates is to show that such a change would not damage the job prospects of unemployed young people.

. The higher cost of employing, the fewer persons will be employed.

. Young people have fewer skills and less experience.

Generally that is the case. Young people often have a higher work motivation and more enthusiasm. I think that has to be balanced against their obvious lack of experience and skills in most cases. The next point is:

. Young people are less mature than are adult employees.

That is often the case as well. More importantly, the next point states:

. Employers believe that young people have fewer skills and are less mature than adult workers.

There is always some sort of resistance to employing young people, so there has to be an incentive to employ those young people. Junior pay rates are an incentive to employ them. The submission further states:

. It is not discrimination to pay less to young workers who are less skilled and have less experience.

. The prime interest for young people to gain workplace experience and to develop labour market skills.

That is one of the major problems that many young people have, particularly those who do not finish their high school education. Many of them have never worked in the workplace and, unfortunately, many of their parents have never worked in the workplace. There is no training within the family unit of workplace skills, of the simple fact of getting up in the morning and going to work. If their parents have never worked in their lifetime, these young people have no guidance. So once they do get a job the employer has to train them in the work ethic—the fact that they have to be reliable, that they have to turn up on time and if they don't, there has to be a reasonable explanation as to why they have not. The submission further states:

. Where junior rates have been eliminated there has been a reduction in youth employment.

. International data show that paying adult wages to young people costs them jobs.

I believe that that submission certainly upholds the case that this legislation should be passed. I was listening to some of the speakers opposite in this debate. Some members raised the issue of discrimination, somehow saying that this issue could be related to the debate over equal pay rates for women in the workplace, and discrimination against Aborigines. There is one difference. Women in the workplace, hopefully throughout their lives will always remain women, and Aborigines will always remain Aborigines, but young people will not always remain young people. They will grow up, they will mature, they will gain skills and as they do so, they will get the wage increases that they are entitled to. They will very quickly become adults.

I saw again in the debate that the Labor Party seems to be locked in a time warp. They were saying that people were going to get a job at 16 and were never going to grow up, that they would be locked into this pover ty trap, as they call it, with low wages for the rest of their lives. A young person is very grateful to get a job at 16 at junior pay rates to get experience and training. With two boys of my own who are now in their early 20s, I know that time flows very quickly. Before you know it they are 17 and they have got a pay rise, which they believe they have earnt. They get a great thrill from that.

Going back to the Lady Hawkesbury cruise ship, when these people turned 17, they had gained extra skills, they had worked. There was a great sense of achievement and enthusiasm when they got that pay rise, because they believed that they had worked hard and trained hard and that they were entitled to that increase. That is what the workplace should be all about—working as a team with your employer and training and getting those skills. I just wanted to make that point, because no-one else seems to have made that point.

The joint government submission that was put forward to the AIRC inquiry also has some very telling points. It says that junior rates are inherently conducive to youth employment and that there are no feasible alternatives to junior rates, non-discriminatory or otherwise, as all available alternatives have a detrimental effect on youth employment and do not properly reflect the differences in skills and maturity between young people and adults, or are difficult and costly to implement and administer. It further states:

The anti-discrimination provisions of the Workplace Relations Act are concerned with equality of opportunity just as much as with equality of treatment.

. . . . . . . . .

Removing those provisions would severely damage the youth labour market in Australia, and would be likely to result in many young people experiencing protracted unemployment, with potentially permanently damaged prospects of labour force integration and reduced career prospects over the longer term.

A number of other points were made in the government submission to that inquiry. Ultimately, this bill reflects the government's goal, the government's achievements, in offering to young people greater opportunities. What we have done as a government is to turn this economy around. We have given people greater opportunities, greater flexibility in the workplace, and we are starting to see the benefits of what this government has done. As a new member in 1996, I came in here full of enthusiasm, full of hope for the country, very concerned about the direction in which we had been going under the Keating government. I stood here and argued for the changes that we made and the difficult decisions that we made in addressing the deficit. I was convinced that we were on the right track, but we did not have the evidence to say that we were.

Now when I go out into the community, I can speak with conviction that the government is on the right track; that we have the evidence, the track record, to show that we are taking Australia forward. I talk to young people now and I say, `Go out there and take the opportunities that now exist.' I talk to my own sons; I talk to their friends. I go to high schools and talk to the young people there. I say, `This government has given you an opportunity to make this country great, to go forward, to get jobs, to buy homes with reduced interest rates'—interest rates that we have not seen in our lifetime—`with the unemployment rate now down to 7.7 per cent and the youth unemployment rate falling.' This government, through the difficult decisions it has had to take, has given the young people of Australia opportunities they previously did not have.

The reason I got into federal parliament was to try to make a difference—and I believe that this piece of legislation is just a further progression of what the government is trying to do. I cannot believe that the Labor opposition is opposing this legislation. It is legislation that makes sense. It is commonsense to allow junior pay rates to exist; to allow young people to enter the work force, to get training, to get accreditation and to become useful citizens within the work force. This legislation is a way of doing that. I commend the bill to the House.