Mr ALBANESE (4:26 PM) —I rise to oppose the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 today, because I think I have a duty to represent those young people in my electorate who will be discriminated against as a result of this legislation. This bill seeks to amend the Workplace Relations Act 1996 in a way that will result in the inclusion of junior rates of pay into awards and workplace agreements. It will also result in the permanent exclusion of junior rates from the age discrimination provisions in the act. Once again, this government is reneging on its promise that no worker will be worse off by the enactment of the Workplace Relations Act. We have to ask ourselves: why is this occurring? What is the rush to push this legislation through?

There is, of course, an inquiry being conducted by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission that has to report to the minister by 22 June 1999. Already, an 111-page issues paper is being circulated, dated 22 December 1998, which has identified a number of the issues which need to be addressed in this legislation. But we are not waiting for the proper process to occur. What we are doing is rushing this bill through the parliament. This is occurring as the result of a broken deal—at the time that the Workplace Relations Act went through the Senate—between the government and the Australian Democrats. But commitment and integrity do not seem to matter terribly much to this minister.

This government are punishing the young people of this country for the government's own inability to create real jobs for young people. It follows on from decisions to cut social security payments to young people, the replacement of the CES with a convoluted Job Network that clearly is not working and ongoing cuts of something like $1 billion to tertiary education throughout the country. On top of this, we have the farcical situation of the common youth allowance legislation which means that over 40,000 young people effectively have been forced to go back to school.

They have displayed a callous disregard for a substantial sector of the population. Of particular concern are those aged between 18 and 21 who are legally of age to vote, to serve their country in military combat, to obtain credit cards or go to pubs; but, according to this bill, they are not old enough to be paid adult wages. This is a staggering bit of logic because it assumes that workers under the age of 21 are of less value to employers than adults.

In opposing this bill, we are simply arguing for the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. We are arguing that, just as young people do not have to pay a different amount when they purchase food or services or accommodation, nor should they, simply because of their age, be paid less wages.

In proposing this bill, this government alleges that it is attempting to protect the competitive position of young people in the labour market. The reality is that this bill will result in low paid young workers who will be exploited by ruthless companies, with the assistance of this government. There is very little statistical evidence to support the claim that lowering junior rates of pay will result in lower youth unemployment and increase the skill base amongst the young people of this country. Lowering junior rates will only result in lower paid young people. What will reduce youth unemployment in this country is serious industry policy, serious training and vocational education policies, and real job creation. That does not mean an expansion of the Work for the Dole schemes, which are only designed to punish the unemployed and to gloss over the unemployment figures.

According to the government submission to the Industrial Relations Commission inquiry into junior wages, 56 per cent of junior employees aged between 15 and 19 are paid under the system of junior rates of pay. Over 375,000 young people fall within this category. That is 375,000 young people who have the potential to be adversely affected by this bill. That is 375,000 young people who may see their wages fall and their opportunities for training dry up. How long will it be before this government attempts to legislate to reduce the wages and conditions of the remaining 44 per cent of the young workers of this country?

The effect that this bill will have on young people greatly concerns me. For example, in my electorate of Grayndler, approximately 20 per cent of the population are aged between 15 and 24. Using the above statistic, approximately 11,000 young people will be potentially adversely affected by this bill.

Contrary to what this government would like the Australian people to believe, the trade union movement has taken a mature and sensible approach to the issue of junior rates of pay over the years. In consultation with employers, the union movement has developed fair and equitable ways to ensure decent wage outcomes for young workers. It must be added that this has been achieved without damaging the viability of the companies involved. This fairness and equity has been achieved in certain industries by moving away from age based wage setting and implementing a competency based or skills acquired system of wage fixation. What is wrong with that?

Government speakers over the last day have consistently said, `We are about giving young people skills. We are about giving them training and lifting them up.' If that is the case, then let us talk about that. There is no correlation between that and an `of necessity' system, which simply means lowering wages for young people. All of this will be swept away if this bill is implemented. It will result in falling rates of pay for junior workers and reduced levels of training for advancement in employment. I fear that, if accepted, this bill will pave the way for low paid, low skilled young workers who will have little or no portability of skills or job experience.

In respect of the inquiry that is currently under way by the full bench of the AIRC, the government is displaying a total disregard for the commission bordering on utter contempt. The commission's inquiry is to focus on whether it is desirable to replace junior rates of pay with alternatives that do not discriminate on the basis of age and the consequences for youth employment of abolishing junior rates. We are not arguing here in support of the commission's guidelines for the inquiry that is taking place. We are not arguing that you do not draw any distinctions in terms of wage rates. We are simply arguing that wage rates should relate to competency and should not be restricted to age discrimination.

It would be far more sensible for this government to wait for the results of this inquiry to be released and then to decide upon a course of action. But it is easy to see why this government wishes to override the commission in this fashion. In the commission's issues paper, released last year, the inquiry exposed a situation where:

. . . for those awards which contain only adult rates, any juniors employed might be faced with a reduction of their minimum rate, if junior rates were to be introduced . . .

Imposing junior rates of pay based on age is an outmoded, unfair system of wage fixation. The permanent exemption of junior rates from the age discrimination provisions only proves that these proposals are discriminatory towards young workers. I find this totally reprehensible.

The Howard government has sought to reduce junior rates of pay for some considerable time. In opposition, the coalition flagged low junior rates of pay around the level of $2.50 to $3 per hour as part of their Fightback package. The Australian people did not hold back in displaying their opposition to this proposal, and it was rejected at the 1993 election.

We have heard a lot of rhetoric from those opposite. They have built arguments just to knock them down. No-one on this side of the House has argued that there is some distinction between jobs in the white-collar or tertiary sector, jobs in places like McDonald's and jobs in the manufacturing sector, so let us get rid of that argument. I think I speak with perhaps a bit more credibility than those opposite who speak about working for mum and dad's small business. That is fine, but not everyone has parents who own a small business. I would suggest that most young people who work at McDonald's do not. They work there because they have to. By and large they are working their way through school. I was certainly in that situation. I had to go out and work my way through school. I grew up in a household where my mother was a sole parent living on a pension. I had to go out and work on a paper run originally. Once you were old enough, the logical place to go was somewhere like McDonald's.

I remember being paid something like $1.20 an hour at one stage to work at McDonald's. Because of what they did in training and because of their discrimination—it was not unionised—if you wanted a shift, you had to go in on Saturday morning and watch, for four hours, propaganda videos about how terrific McDonald's was and how lucky you were to have a job there. You got paid nothing. You had to pay your own bus fare to the store.

You also had a number of so-called voluntary systems after work. You had to go in and be there unpaid, otherwise you did not get any shifts—all this for the grand total of something like $1.20 an hour. Everyone who worked at McDonald's knew, because their system was based upon junior rates of pay, that once you hit the age of 17 you were out the door with no training, simply because they based their system at that time on employing the people to whom they could pay the least amount.

I think it is terrific that some 40,000 people work at McDonald's. That is fine, but the fact is that junior wage rates help entrench a situation whereby young people—by and large not unionised—can be exploited and then thrown on the scrap heap solely on the basis of age. So I get a bit upset when some of the toffs over on the other side of the House speak about how we are supposedly not concerned about McJobs and how we draw a distinction. The fact is that the people whom the Labor Party represents know that many young people are out there getting whatever job they can and being exploited by unscrupulous employers.

I well remember when Mr Peter Ritchie, the head of McDonald's, was arguing for a special youth wage—being supported by John Howard and the coalition in the 1980s—because, as a Young Labor member, I was campaigning very strongly against such proposals to drive people's wages down even further. There is no lower limit that those sorts of unscrupulous employers would not stoop to in terms of paying their staff a `decent' wage, and this legislation very much opens up the proposal to pay young people even less.

The proposal is a distortion of the labour market. All these people speak about level playing fields and how the market has to be allowed to operate, but it distorts the market to pay different rates of pay to someone who is 16 years old and someone who is 18 years old, where the 16-year-old has exactly the same skills as the 18-year-old—or as a 25-year-old for that matter. That is a distortion of the labour market and it is against the principles which people on the other side of the House purport to represent. We argue that you need to look at a whole range of issues, in terms of competency and skills base, if those opposite are going to be fair dinkum and if we are not going to simply exploit young people.

This legislation is pretty consistent with the government's attitude towards young people. This government is really in the business of shifting the blame, and in many instances young people are targeted as causing problems for our society and our economy. With this blame comes punishment, the basic premise behind the government's plan, and the rhetoric about working for the dole or about literacy and numeracy. These are the same people who have cut back the adult migrant English services for people who are trying to learn English so they can get into jobs; these are the people who have implemented massive cuts to education.

How is it, with regard to this latest plan, that a school system which has failed over 10 years to give people proper skills will put them into a six-week course that will supposedly solve the whole problem? It really is a case of blame the victim, and it is an attempt to shift the welfare debate to one which is about the individual. It is the individualisation of the welfare debate.

We should be about maximising people's language and numeracy skills. I have no problem with that all. The principle is absolutely sound. It is a fact that in a lot of places, such as in my electorate, that is happening. The Exodus Foundation, run by Reverend Bill Crews, does a fantastic job of taking young people—many of whom are street kids—who have had a problem with learning and giving them, in a proper and compassionate way, skills so they can participate in the society from which they feel alienated.

These are the sorts of programs that the government should support if it is fair dinkum. There is just one example, run by a private operation—a church in this case—and Bill Crews does a great job. But what young people continually hear from this government is that they are to blame for the problems that are not of their creation, problems that they have inherited from other generations. You simply cannot solve the problems of youth employment by cutting wages and bringing up these mickey mouse schemes, because complex factors contribute to this situation—poverty, dysfunctional home life, difficulties with English as a second language and undiagnosed learning difficulties.

There are no simple causes and there are no simple answers either. But this government is committed to simplistic slogans against young people. With regard to wages, it would appear that the simplistic slogan is, `If we just pay them less, they'll be more employable.' That is not an appropriate way to go forward. This legislation is shoddy. It is being rushed through at a time when we do have a proper inquiry and it should be opposed by this parliament. The young people of this country deserve real employment opportunities with real wage and salary levels, not low paid, low skilled jobs with very little future. I urge the parliament to reject this legislation.