Ms ROXON (1:16 PM) —We have had a number of speakers from both sides of the House already speak in some detail—and, on this side of the House, persuasively—about the difficult issue of youth wages. It is clear that it is not an issue for glib statements or easy populist solutions. It is equally clear that the government's Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill seeks not only to maintain youth wages, irrespective of the work being performed by young people, but also to extend them to areas where they have never existed before and never been demanded and are not even regarded as appropriate.

That this bill and its proposal are discriminatory cannot be avoided as an absolute truth—although I do notice that the member for Robertson, who spoke immediately prior to me, seems not to have acknowledged that as an absolute truth. It appears that a large number of members of the coalition benches do not appreciate that using age as an arbitrary definition of whether you have skills or talent or experience or capacity is, in fact, discrimination.

This whole debate is being run at cross-purposes. The coalition is saying, `We should, as employers, be able to employ young people so that they can obtain skills in the workplace and go on and contribute for a long time in their working lives to come.' In fact, the member for Robertson gave a rather quaint example of working on a ship, the name of which already escapes me, where a large number of young people under his tutelage were able to grow to adulthood and then be paid an appropriate rate.

What the member for Robertson refuses to acknowledge is something that the members on this side of the House have been arguing very convincingly and in a non-discriminatory way: that, if those people are in their first job, if they are being trained and if they have no skills when they start, there is a much more appropriate and non-discriminatory manner for dealing with them. That is called a training wage; it is called competency based wage rates; it is called having an appropriate classification structure. It does not use age as an arbitrary definer of whether or not those people have that skill.

I would be more than happy for the member for Robertson to perhaps return to his position as a friendly educator for these young people, and no doubt those young people would be happy to be employed on rates of pay that reflect their skill. If, in fact, some of those young people already had some skills in boating, or already had some other service skills, I am sure that the member for Robertson, following his argument, would accept that, once they had those skills, they should be paid appropriately for them. This is one of the big falsities of the argument that has been going back and forth in the House this morning. Youth wages and skill based wage rates are not the same thing.

I also heard the member for Gilmore this morning say that she did not believe that the system being proposed by the government was discriminatory, she did not believe that it discriminated against the young, and she would not support it if it did. She does not think it is discriminatory because it gives these young people a chance to get some experience. As I have already indicated, this defies logic.

Anyone who is familiar with our industrial relations system knows that there is a capacity for training wages and competency based skill structures, which appropriately allow payment based on the level of skill and irrespective of age. We know that age cannot determine these things, in just the same way that gender, race, hair colour and other arbitrary indicators cannot.

The fact that this is discriminatory is some sort of blind spot for the coalition. It seeks to argue that it is not discriminatory, hoping perhaps by repetition that we will be convinced it is not. The coalition fails to recognise that the legislation is of a discriminatory nature, I think, because, once it concedes that it is, it does not have the intellectual rigour to explain to us why the legislation should remain in place nevertheless.

We on this side of the House recognise that youth wages are discriminatory, but we also recognise that it is a complex issue and that change will need to be carefully considered and managed. This was a view that the government held until recently, as it legislatively required an inquiry into the complex issue of junior rates. But now it is more interested in some populist mantra—unsubstantiated, of course—that this change will create jobs. It has gone for the crash or crash-through policy, rather than wait for a considered report from the experts in the area, the Industrial Relations Commission.

We have heard before these arguments about what is and is not discriminatory. We have had the argument—as the member for Robertson already alluded to—about women's wages; and we have had the argument about Aboriginal wages. Once again the same things have been said. Didn't we say that Aboriginal stockmen should not be paid full wages because they should be grateful just to have food and somewhere to sleep? Didn't we say that, with white men being employed instead, Aboriginal stockmen would actually be unemployed? We are hearing the same arguments now: won't we employ adults, if young people are paid the same wages?

We said that it was not discriminatory to pay women less because they did not have the same skill and intelligence—and, anyway, their needs were more modest. In saying that young people deserve less, are we now saying that their needs are less or not as important as those of others? If a particular young person is supporting a family, would a new system allow them to be paid more?

Despite concerns and difficulties, no-one in our community now truly believes that Aboriginal workers or women should be paid less for their work than their white or male counterparts. But, although we are in the 1990s, nearly into the next millennium, the recognition on the government frontbench of a modern reality and a modern discriminatory problem based on age still has not sunk in.

There is an irony in this situation: the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business has a propensity to cast unions and the ALP as the group in our community that is `rash, thoughtless and irresponsible'; but it is a title in this situation that only he can wear. The unions and the ALP know that this is an issue that is unfair, that must be resolved and that must be dealt with with caution and fairness.

But the government's answer to an issue which is discriminatory and complex is simply to make it more discriminatory. Let's not even be content with maintaining the status quo; let's actually extend it into areas where we never have had youth wages before. To answer this problem, let's make it more discriminatory. Let's make employment of young people even more insecure. Let's change the unfair dismissal laws so that, in the first six months of your first job, you can be dismissed for no reason. It does not matter what your skills are; in fact, it does not matter what your age is—although, of course, young people entering the work force for the first time will be disproportionately affected by that.

In dealing with this complex problem, let's make it more discriminatory; let's make it easier to sack young people—after all, we would not want them to feel secure in their employment. Let's also make it more difficult if you are a young person and you cannot get that job to start with; let's say that you will be treated differently to others in whether or not you are to receive your Newstart entitlements. You might as well get used to the idea that you will be treated differently in the workplace once you get there, so you might as well be treated differently out of the workplace as well.

Just to add to these three brilliant ways of resolving a complex and difficult problem—we will make it more discriminatory; we will make it easier to sack people; and we will make it discriminatory when you are in the workplace, just so that you get used to the idea for when you actually do get a job—let's also add a GST rate. Do not let anybody misunderstand that the GST—

Mr Lloyd —Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. I know that there has been quite a bit of free ranging debate on this bill, but I would ask you to bring the member back to the bill. I believe that she is ranging a little too widely at the moment.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. I.R. Causley) —I think the member has wandered away from the bill. I ask her to come back to the point of the bill.

Ms ROXON —Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker. The GST does have an impact and is relevant to the bill that is before the House. We are talking about the application of a system of youth wages which will entrench a different rate at which young people will be paid. Their earning capacity will be affected by this legislation, but the taxes that the government is prepared to take will be at the full adult rate.

This is an argument about the double standards of the government. Looking at this legislation, we are dealing with whether or not the government regards people who are 16 or 17—or 19 or 20, for that matter—as adults. The government, through the use of its tax package, is happy to take an adult contribution when taxing these people, but it is not happy to regard them as adults for the purposes of the payment of their wages.

The government does not want to look at whether or not these people are doing an adult's work; it does not want to look at making some sort of sensible assessment about whether or not the skills that a person is performing are being performed at the adult level. However, the government does want to say, `Because you are 16, or because you are 19, you should be paid a different amount, but we'll still take the same amount of money when you buy your food at the shop, we'll still take the same amount of money when you pay a tax on your bus fare to work.' It is actually very relevant to what this government is doing through this legislation.

I think the message from the government on this issue is pretty clear. The government is clear about the way they want to regard youth in this community—although it takes the youth vote as a full vote; it does not take it at half the rate. The government cares about youth as a source of income, whether with the GST, whether through tightening benefits to young unemployed people or restricting their entitlements to youth allowance. But the government is not prepared to treat these people as adults when it comes to the work they are doing. The government is not prepared to listen to their advocacy groups either, demonstrated by its reduction of funding for APEC and all sorts of other issues.

Not only will this legislation impact on young people in an unfair and unjust manner, but also the government, through its action of proposing this bill, runs the risk of our losing them forever as contributors to our communi ty. We know that for young people there is already a growing cynicism about politics and public life. We want them to participate in civic life, and we want them to respect this government's concepts of mutual obligation. We want and demand and we want and demand, and it goes on. But we are not prepared to recognise them and appreciate them when they work at an adult level.

I also wanted to focus particularly on the ever-diminishing role of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. This issue is absolutely relevant to the legislation which at the moment is before the House. Under this government, not only have we seen fairly relentless attacks on ordinary working people and basic conditions, but also, perhaps more insidiously, we have seen the role of the independent umpire restricted, ignored and dismissed. This has been observed with the list of allowable award matters, the limits on the commission's capacity to arbitrate and its access to unfair dismissals.

With the current amendment, we see that the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business is trying to push the issue of youth wages through the parliament, before a full and proper inquiry has been conducted by the commission into the detailed circumstances and the impact of any changes in this area. We all know that the Industrial Relations Commission is well placed to do this review. We know that it has the government's terms of reference and it includes its appointees on the bench. But the government is still scared of the outcome and, instead, wants to push through with this reform.

The member for Robertson stood up and said in his speech that we all know that the issue of youth wages and unemployment is a complex one, that there is no magic answer and, quoting him, `no-one has it'. I think it would be helpful for us if the member for Robertson perhaps raised with the minister this issue of why the minister thinks he is the only person who has the answer to this complex question; why the minister does not listen to the Industrial Relations Commission and wait for its report is beyond all of us.

It is a complex issue. We know that it will take a long time to resolve. We know that, even though we recognise it as discriminatory, there are a large number of issues that will have to be dealt with, even once the commission's report is handed down. The member for Batman this morning has already gone through how complex this issue is and its interaction with unemployment.

In speaking against the bill, I would say this: when the coalition and many of the speakers on the other side of the House refuse to acknowledge that this legislation is discriminatory, I have this to say—and I say it particularly to the women who are on the opposite benches—these arguments have been run before; they have been run about us. The arguments about women's capacity, their skill and their impact on employment if we entered the work force were all proved false. We would not, as women, be here receiving equal pay with our male colleagues if these discriminatory arguments had prevailed. It is the same argument; it is just a different group.

Do not allow yourselves, I say to the women on the government benches, to be associated with this equally discriminatory system against young people. Do not let us be part of another generation of workplace discrimination.