Mr RIPOLL (9:58 AM) —I rise this morning to speak on the Youth Allowance Consolidation Bill 1999 . This bill is a necessary piece of legislation to basically tidy up the government's ill-conceived and hastily enacted youth income support payment system—the youth allowance acts. Since its rushed introduction late last year, both the intended recipients—young people—and the payment delivery agency—Centrelink—have been struggling to truly understand the entitlements that are available and the rules governing access to those entitlements, particularly in relation to payments previously available under the student assistance programs, Austudy. Although this bill will consolidate most of the previous provisions relating to youth allowance into the Social Security Act, thereby at least making the basic rules for the system easier to find, it fails to address the fundamental problems surrounding the system.

Changes in the youth allowance at this time—even necessary changes—are impossible to implement effectively due to the climate of fear and the element of fatigue suffered by the major players in this legislation. Changes to the youth allowance affect two groups in particular: the young people of Australia and the staff at Centrelink. Through a succession of government policies, both of these groups have been left in no doubt that this government cannot successfully deal with these affairs.

With regard to Centrelink, which is responsible for administering the provisions of the legislation, this government has slashed away at the organisation, leaving massive understaffing. This, in turn, has made Centrelink absolutely unable to cope with the demands placed upon it. The consequence of this is bungling from the agency, a crisis in staff morale and a disconnection between the offices and the community that it serves.

The bungling in Centrelink is now of serious national concern. This agency, responsible for payments to over six million Australians, has been repeatedly cut to the point where it can no longer do its job effectively. The recent overpayment crisis highlights the situation being faced by Centrelink customers. Customers deserve better than to have debts hanging over their heads for no reason other than an error at Centrelink's end. Staff, on the other hand, are dedicated and professional in their commitment to their clients. I am certain it pains staff greatly to cut corners or make mistakes simply because there is not enough staff to do the job properly.

The government seems arrogant and indifferent to the problems in Centrelink. Along with the unsustainable slashing of 5,000 jobs, the government diverts staff from the task of serving customers and uses them instead to promote the politics of the Liberal and the National parties. Staff and resources that should be ensuring that young people receive their proper entitlements under the youth allowance legislation have instead been applied to the politicisation of Centrelink's communication with its customers. It is a national scandal.

Earlier this year, the government was found to have breached the privacy of 1.7 million pensioners and veterans by spending $800,000 on political propaganda about the GST during the 1998 election campaign. That information was sent via Centrelink. Apart from the obvious implications of privacy and electoral impropriety, it is a wasteful use of government resources. The government should have spent the money wasted on the tax funded GST campaign to provide adequate and timely provision of support payments for young people.

Timeliness is an important issue for young people—indeed, all social security recipients—as most payments are not backdated but can only commence from the time an application is duly received and processed by Centrelink. At least something is being done about this issue through schedule 1 to this bill, which deals with fares allowance. This seeks to add provisions under which a claim for fares allowance may be treated as having been received when the person first contacts Centrelink about the claim by telephone or fax. In theory, this is good.

However, it is now an accepted truth that Centrelink clients cannot speak with a real human being that knows anything about their situation. The dehumanisation of Centrelink is dangerous and degrading for both customers and staff. Current figures illustrate that over 80 per cent of callers failed to get through to Centrelink in 1998. These trends have continued in figures for the first month of this year. In human terms, around 250,000 calls a day are failing to get through to Centrelink. The fact is that calling Centrelink is now becoming the new national lottery.

The 1300 numbers are not functioning because the staffing levels are not adequate and the centralisation of call services does not recognise the unique and personal nature of Centrelink inquiries. People who ring do so only when there is a problem. When people have a problem with something as important as a government benefit, each call is very serious and each one can take some time.

Creating a national call centre has been a disaster. I know that assisting constituents is made that much harder without at least some level of access to the office in which the matter is being dealt with. It is impossible to understand the frustration faced by a Centrelink customer who, after five attempts at ringing the local office, finally gets through, only to be talking with a telephone operator in Sydney or perhaps in Melbourne.

After the nightmare of making telephone contact with staff, the public face the next blow-out in Centrelink—appointment waiting lists. Customers on youth allowance and Newstart are facing delays of up to 14 days before being interviewed. This has resulted in people facing a two-week delay in lodging Centrelink forms. That means two weeks without financial support and two weeks before people can be registered as unemployed for the purposes of the Job Network. And, guess what, the provisions in this bill with regard to fares allowance require that the formal claim is lodged within 14 days of the initial contact. Young people lose again.

The government's plan to introduce agencies to replace Centrelink offices is a concern not only for the privacy and security of rural and regional clients but also because it represents a significant deskilling of the service. In an appalling attempt to paper over the cracks in the Centrelink budget, the Howard government's only solution is to spend $5 million in order to turn credit unions, post offices, business centres and individuals into Centrelink service providers in rural and regional Australia.

This concept raises significant privacy implications. The reality is that Centrelink staff are specifically trained to deal with information regarding taxable income, investments and assets of individuals, information relating to family matters, including family breakdown and custody arrangements, health and medical history, and employment details. This information is by far more sensitive and personal than information currently accessed by the types of non-government organisations outlined by the government. Such information would be required by schedule 3 of the bill covering provisions on the family actual means test and schedule 4 covering definitions of homeless person and FA child.

Centrelink deals with many people who require the services of trained and dedicated staff, of public servants who respect the privacy of an individual and are accountable for their actions. What these agencies will be is a drop-off point: forms can be lodged, but real, meaningful assistance will be scarce, if any.

Quite frankly, Centrelink is in disarray. The service is failing dismally now and racing backwards at breakneck speed. This agency will not welcome changes to the youth allowance when it cannot cope with the current workloads. Changes to allowances, regardless of the benefits of such change, will overburden the current system. What this government should be presenting to the parliament is a package of fundamental and wholesale improvements to Centrelink; the restoration of the budget, so that over six million Australians can be properly serviced; and staffing levels returned to a point where mistakes can be avoided, customers can make contact with the department and the nation can regain its confidence in the social security system. Until this is done, Centrelink will fail to meet the basic needs of young people, and the government will be judged harshly for this.

Set against the plummeting fortunes of Centrelink is the battle-weary youth of Australia. The young people of Australia have received no good news from this government. Policies that strip away youth services and the politics of finger pointing have left young people very cynical and distrusting of change. The provisions covering entitlement to youth allowance force young people under 21 or full-time students up to the age of 25 to remain dependent on their parents and to further have their entitlements assessed on the basis of their parents' income.

The government's agenda has been transparent to young people: Work for the Dole, the Job Network and the common youth allowance are seen as massive failures. These programs lack any vision or tangible outcomes, and the fact that all these initiatives come at the expense of labour market programs and proven government services only serves to further frustrate those young people languishing in the mire of government incompetence.

Work for the Dole has failed to deliver anything in the way of meaningful training or work readiness for Australia's young unemployed. The system could quite rightly be described as `turn up for the dole'. While this may satisfy the Howard government and their punitive outlook on the young unemployed, it is doing nothing to enhance the job prospects of young job seekers. Work for the Dole must be a complement to a range of labour market programs that give all unemployed people the broad range of skills, experience and motivation that will create the shift from long-term unemployment to paid work.

Unfortunately, that cannot happen because this government have scrapped effective and efficient labour market programs, leaving themselves with a one-pronged attack on the issue of the long-term unemployed. These labour market programs were not only effective but supported and endorsed by those going through those very programs. That support came not only from the fact that participants saw these programs as adding greatly to their future employment prospects but also because they treated all unemployed people fairly.

The Work for the Dole scheme is a compulsory requirement for young unemployed that are reliant on youth allowance because it suits the ideology of this government. This government is not about fixing unemployment; it simply wants to be seen to be tough with young unemployed people. This is why in my electorate of Oxley we particularly suffer some of the worst youth unemployment statistics in Australia. In suburbs across my electorate, unemployment is routinely sitting at over 10 per cent of the population, while for those young unemployed people who seek to join the labour force the teenage unemployment rate is up to 30 per cent in some areas. This is clearly not acceptable. This is a tragedy and a scandal in itself. Nearly one in every three young job seekers cannot find work. While this is alarming at a statistical level, it is crippling at a human level.

The great and shameful legacy of this government is their failing on youth unemployment. Young people have been abandoned by the system. Many young people have not had employment in their lives. They have moved from school to unemployment. Their days are filled with hopelessness and sometimes the reckless and antisocial behaviour that often accompanies such hopelessness. These are the young Australians that we must move heaven and earth to get into work. We must create a social safety net that encourages and supports them as they move from benefits to jobs.

The youth allowance must become part of an active package of measures designed to address youth unemployment, not to beat up on young people, but rather an integral part of rewarding young people for work. The youth allowance, must—as the vision of the Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, illustrated—be an enabler not a way of life.

The Prime Minister's policies lack that vision. His youth allowance lacks vision and it will continue to fail the young people of our nation. The difficulties faced by our youth are compounded by the government's continued use of experimental and failing services. Of all the experiments of this government, none has failed more spectacularly than the Job Network. This shambolic amalgamation of disparate services was built on the ruins of the ground where the CES once stood.

The Job Network has failed, no matter what smoke and mirrors are used by the government to pretend otherwise. Minister Kemp's great social reform has failed and it has cost all of us dearly. From day one the system started to break down and service providers experienced financial difficulty. The government has since been forced to come to the financial aid of the network several times, and is well short of finding a sustainable platform from which the network will be viable.

Apart from the financial difficulties experienced within the network, the changes have meant that services that were previously freely available to all are now being denied to many. Services are overwhelmingly being run on a commercial rather than on a community or public interest basis. The changes mean that most local community agencies, like Skillshare, have disappeared and regions with high unemployment, such as mine, are not being adequately serviced.

The government's suggestion that the Job Network has increased outlets for support for the unemployed simply does not add up. The fact is there are 150 fewer public, community and private case management sites since the Job Network was introduced. This is a fall of nearly 20 per cent. Because this government cannot get its act together on labour market programs and the Job Network, young unemployed people are left languishing on the common youth allowance.

The concept that young people who are unemployed or studying can be penalised for their parents' earnings at less than $25,000 has left young people struggling and has also had an impact on the entire family. The youth allowance will keep a lot of young people at home. It will also keep a lot of homes in hock. This government should be aware that you cannot be pro families and be anti young people.

In my electorate it is average families who are battling under the increasing financial burden placed on them through changes to the away from home rates and means testing. Not all families share in the Prime Minister's white picket fence dream. The government stay at home youth allowance has failed young people and it is making things tougher and tougher for those young people who, for a variety of reasons, cannot stay at home.

By applying Work for the Dole and the ill conceived and ridiculous `read for the dole' scheme exclusively to young Australians, this government is again playing the politics of finger pointing. These policies are designed to convince Australia that youth unemployment is a result of the failings and laziness of young people. The government cannot sidestep their own failures on this crucial national issue.

If the Prime Minister were serious about literacy he would put the government's money where his mouth is, but no new money is available for literacy training for the unemployed. Instead, the government's commitment to literacy training for the unemployed remains a pitiful $21 million a year. Without new resources the literacy program will be nothing but a hollow stunt.

The bill also provides for the administration of student assistance payments to young people continuing their education. Access to quality education is the most important issue facing young Australians today. Education will make the difference in every young person's life yet this government has let education slide. Budget cuts and up-front university fees are reducing the availability and quality of education for young people.

The government's budget cuts in education have resulted in reduced funding for public schools. At a time when public school enrolments are increasing due, in no small measure, to the government's eligibility requirements for youth allowance, this government is creating a crisis in government schools. Students at university, meantime, are faced with rising up-front government charges as well as an increase in HECS to pay for massive cuts to education funding. That any government can approach the new millennium with a reduced commitment to higher education is simply unbelievable.

The daunting prospect facing many university students and their families is that they will have to meet the increased costs with less support through the youth allowance. This is exactly why there is an overall reduction in the number of Australian students at universities and TAFE colleges. Reducing access to education and training is not just stupid, it threatens the nation's future. Yet still the government persecutes the young people of Australia. They resent Minister Reith and his youth wages because they know the truth. Lower youth wages will not create more jobs, while skills based wages will result in competitive wages for young people in most industries. It is not just the Democrats and Senator Harradine who know the government cannot be trusted; young people know it also.

Now is the time for the government to restore faith with the young people of Australia. Now is the time for the Prime Minister to provide real assistance to young people through a commitment to education and training; to redouble the fight against youth unemployment; and provide fair and reasonable financial support payments and an agency with adequate resource to deliver those payments. We need to stand up for young people and their families, not punish them and not push them down. This youth allowance legislation does nothing for the young people of Australia.