Senator JACINTA COLLINS (12:31 PM) —This is Minister Reith's so-called youth employment bill, and I say so-called because it would be more aptly named the `youth wages bill'. This is a bill that not only because of what it contains but because of the process that is involved should not even be before this parliament. Let me deal firstly with the real agenda of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 . It is not, as the title seems to indicate, a bill that will improve working conditions or increase job opportunities for young Australians, nor will it even reasonably address youth unemployment in areas such as the bush. The real agenda is consistent with the typical approach of Minister Reith, an approach which has been mean-spirited and designed to ruthlessly cut costs and attack victims.

Let me go to the bill itself. If we look at the explanatory memorandum of the bill we would see what we might anticipate in relation to this legislation, which is legislation to deal with the exemption of junior rates—an issue that was canvassed during the workplace relations bill inquiry and which was the subject of an arrangement between the government and the Democrats. But, no, this legislation goes much further than this. If we look at what this bill represents, it covers permanently exempting junior rates, as one might expect. It also seeks to include in the principal object of the act and in the objects of part 6 of the act the protection of the competitive position of young people in the labour market, and the promotion of youth employment and the reduction of youth unemployment—laudable aims, but I will deal further with how it seeks to do that.

The third dot point also highlights that this bill seeks to promote the inclusion of junior rates of pay in awards and agreements. It actually promotes the inclusion of junior rates. When this matter was debated in the House of Representatives the question was asked, `What is a junior rate?' It appears that the answer could be `a rate for those up to 21 years of age'. This legislation is actually seeking to promote the inclusion of junior rates for Australian workers, who are up to possibly 21 years of age, in the roughly 50 per cent of awards that do not actually contain them.

This brought back memories to me. I did a search and found a Sydney Morning Herald article which proposed a $3 an hour youth pay proposal. This was part of the government's Fightback campaign. There is nothing new in this proposal. There is no new measure to assist youth unemployment. It is simply a matter of cutting costs, cutting wages, with the arguable claim that it will increase employment. This was rejected around the time that this community, this country, debated Fightback. This was rejected then and, as this morning's Australian points out, it is not something that the government has a clear mandate on. In a front-page article in today's Australian, Richard McGregor reports—

Senator Ian Campbell —Read Glenn Milne—it is much better reading.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS —It is actually much better reading, but that was two weeks ago, Senator Campbell. But, back to the point, in relation to Reith's call-up of business, it says:

. . . after he—

Minister Reith—

agreed to soft-pedal on the issue during the election campaign.

So where is this mandate that Minister Reith had agreed to soft-pedal on in order that Australians would not really understand that what he is actually after is the insertion of rates as low as $3 per hour for Australia's junior workers? If there is any concern about whether this is really the case, whether this bill really does mean this, let me take you to some of the provisions of the bill. Point 3 of the bill says:

3 After paragraph 88B(3)(b)

Insert:

(ba) the need to protect the competitive position of young people in the labour market, to promote youth employment, and to assist in reducing youth unemployment, through appropriate junior wage provisions;

Anyone dealing with industrial law would then ask the question: `What do we mean by "appropriate"?' What would the commission regard as appropriate in such matters? And if you look further you would find what the commission might have to refer to on this issue. In the explanatory memorandum again, at point 2.3, there is an explanation of what is meant here. It states:

2.3 The provision recognises, however, that there may be circumstances in which it is not appropriate for awards to contain junior rates. For example, under some awards the employment of people under a certain age is effectively precluded for reasons such as legally imposed barriers (for example, in relation to legal driving ages) . . .

This one is actually a non-example because the provision with respect to where the commission was to apply these powers is meant to relate to areas where young people actually work. So the first example the commission has to refer to is a non-example because it is not even relevant to where it is meant to be exercising its powers. The second example is of course a good one. It is:

. . . or the qualifications required for the work (for example, nurses or engineers).

There would be very few examples today of people under the age of 21 who have concluded their nursing training or their engineering training. I will tell you what, if they have been good enough to get through the education and qualification systems by the age of 21, they deserve the adult rate of pay. They are the only examples referred to. The government is seeking to extend this provision to the other 50 per cent of awards where, in the past, the commission has determined junior rates not to be relevant and where juniors up to 21 years of age do work, or potentially work, in those fields.

The final reference point for the commission that I want to highlight is in the minister's second reading speech, because this dispels any doubt about what this legislation is really about. About half way through the fifth last paragraph of the speech, the minister says:

By protecting existing junior rates, and making junior rates more widely available, these provisions will contribute towards enhanced job opportunities for young people and complement the changes to the principal object of the Workplace Relations Act.

That is the object I highlighted. But the important point is the next one, which is:

They recognise the links between junior wages and youth employment and unemployment.

These links are very arguable links. But the minister has written that into his second reading speech. The commission, with its new powers, would need to refer back to that speech to see how it is to apply those powers. It would say, `The guidance we have on this issue is that there is a link between junior wages and youth employment. This is even though America does not have them. But, in Australia, in this context, there is that link; therefore, we should introduce them, under the new provisions in our objects, right across all of our awards. That is, of course, unless there is a non-example such as young people who cannot work under that award anyway, or there is an example where someone has gained qualifications in nursing or engineering.' Therefore, I go back to my original example. We are looking at rates of pay cuts right across the board. That is what this legislation represents. That is why the opposition will reject this bill.

We will have the minister claiming that it is, once again, Senate obstructionism; that we are not allowing his legislation through; that we are denying the Australian community thousands and thousands of jobs. We had the unfair dismissal bill that was meant to provide 50,000 jobs. We had the proposals that were meant to provide half a million jobs. In this case, the minister is not quite as consistent. In the More Jobs, Better Pay proposal they took to the election, the quote was 300,000 jobs but, in the ministerial discussion paper on protecting job opportunities, we are looking at 220,000. Once again, the minister is plucking figures out of the air as to how many jobs there would be.

The financial impact that is cited in the explanatory memorandum is another example of how shoddily all this has been put together. If we are talking about inserting junior rates right across Australian awards and affecting the 50 per cent of awards that currently do not include them, then we are looking at a significant drain, I would have thought, on our social security budget. There are many people under the age of 21 who have families—who have children—who currently would not be eligible for social security benefits but who, if they had their wages cut under this sort of proposal, would thenceforth become so.

This is another example of how minister Reith is throwing up legislation which seeks to cast the Senate in a particular light of being obstructionistic when what he is really doing is backing away from his previous commitments and not taking no for an answer. The minister simply cannot accept no as an answer from the Senate. He keeps presenting to us legislation which he knows will be rejected. The question, then, is why is he doing it? How does he see it as furthering his objectives? If it is going to cast him in a strong light to assist him to drag himself out of the charade he dug for himself over the waterfront dispute, that is one thing. But the minister is not addressing his own objectives. The minister is casting himself as a class warrior. He is doing that in the way he described to a Perth business luncheon late last year, when he said:

Never forget the history of politics and never forget which side we're on. We're on the side of making profits. We're on the side of owning private capital.

This comment from the minister is not consistent with the objectives that he is meant to represent in his role as minister for workplace relations. He is meant to be promoting cooperative workplace relations whereas his style is one which simply seeks to generate further conflict and further difficulties. The only policy options he seems able to come up with are cut wages, cut benefits; cut wages, cut benefits. This is yet another example of this. This is consistent with his attack on the award system that we saw with the workplace relations bill. It is consistent with the letter that was leaked and then released three weeks ago, and it is consistent with his agenda as a whole.

But the amusing thing is that the minister seeks to claim a mandate in relation to this bill. He says it was mentioned in More Jobs, Better Pay. But the reality is when this approach was last canvassed it was quite clearly rejected. Nobody could claim that the past election debate was over introducing cuts to wages and junior rates. The only memory that sticks in people's minds about that debate was that it occurred during Fightback. It is stretching the point a long way to say that you have a mandate on the very same day as a major national newspaper announces that you had actually agreed to soft-pedal on the issue. I am sorry but the two are just not consistent.

Going back to the issue of mandate in general that has been relied upon by various parties in relation to other issues before the parliament, to claim a mandate when less than 40 per cent of people voted for the government and 48 per cent of people in the House of Representatives is quite ludicrous, but it is even more ludicrous when it is an issue that you soft-pedalled on. You hid. You might have written two lines in a policy statement, but that was it. That was the extent of the debate. There was no debate over a proposal to cut the wages of 50 per cent of people under the age of 21 currently in the work force. That is what this bill is seeking to do.

Not only did the minister misrepresent his mandate, but he also ran some very interesting arguments in support of his proposals. Let me give one example of misrepresentation. He misrepresented the SDA when on 2 December last year he claimed that the SDA supported junior rates. Instead, let me use SDA's actual submission to the Industrial Relations Commission inquiry, which I will come to later, to highlight their concerns with this bill. The SDA speaks with some authority as it covers more than half of Australia's junior work force who are employed in the retail and fast food service industries. The submission states that those junior rates are discriminatory in that they pay employees in accordance with their age, rather than in accordance with the value of the work performed. So it is discriminatory.

The submission states that junior rates are illogical in a society where the emphasis is not on discrimination but on equity. But the minister wants to keep discrimination. The submission also states that parallels can be drawn with women workers achieving equal pay for work of equal value and young workers who should also be paid in accordance with the value of their work. I can certainly recall the arguments in the seventies about how many jobs would be lost if equal pay or work for equal value was extended fully to women. But now the minister is applying the same arguments, the same form, to young people.

A final reference to the SDA's submission is the comment that junior rates are a form of exploitation of young workers: they perpetuate the financial difficulty facing young workers as their income is set at a fraction of the adult rate, whilst their living expenses are not discounted in a similar way. That is hardly the sort of statement one would expect from a submission that is meant to be supporting junior rates.

The SDA did seek to be balanced in its submission to the commission. It did seek to say, `We can understand that there are some circumstances where it is difficult to find competency based measures or other means of assessing skill in relation to young people.' It made the suggestion that for young people under the age of 18 years, if—and I stress `if'—training is a component of their job, reduced rates might be appropriate. That was the closest thing that could have been taken to support junior rates: an attempt to provide some balance into this debate by saying that if there was recognised training linked to a job—training obviously recognising the fact that many young people do not have the full skills of an adult worker—then that might be the best way to assess it. But there was certainly not a statement that age should be the only factor which sets a person's rate of pay and certainly not above the age of 18 years.

Again, we are left with a situation where half of the junior work force who are not currently on junior rates could end up on them. There is no discussion of how transitory problems might be dealt with in any of this legislation. There is no guarantee that `no worker would be worse off', to quote the Prime Minister. There is no protection of people's current rates of pay. There has been no statement from the minister to that effect. So I do not think I am stretching a long bow to say that that could quite easily be the consequence. If you go back to the explanatory memorandum, the statement is quite clear: we are going to promote the inclusion of junior rates into awards. There is no mention of protections for current workers—nothing at all.

Let me conclude my remarks on the issue of how we got to this stage. We got to this stage because when we were debating the workplace relations bill in 1996 the government reached an agreement with the Democrats that the commission would conduct an inquiry. I think it is important to say what they will assess in that inquiry: whether it is desirable to replace junior rates with non-discriminatory alternatives—so we are looking at alternatives; we are not just talking about abolishing junior rates—and the utility of junior rates for different types of employment, for different industries and in the school to work transition.

Again, that inquiry will deal with a myriad of issues that are completely ignored in this bill to the extent that from the opposition's point of view, and pre-empting an amendment that Senator Murray will move, this bill is so flawed that it should not be allowed through the parliamentary process without being re-presented. It needs to be re-presented to the House of Representatives. We need to start the process afresh after the commission inquiry is concluded.

I am still waiting for an answer to a question I put on notice during estimates: how much has the government paid for this inquiry to date? How much public expenditure has been put into this inquiry that the minister is pre-empting? The minister is pre-empting the inquiry in the same way that he pre-empted the unfair dismissals legislation; and we are yet to see whether that is going to present itself here again. So the minister is completely pre-empting all of the terms that he put to the Industrial Relations Commission inquiry. In fact, it is arguable that he is perhaps doing more than that. Perhaps he is seeking to bully and intimidate the commission into the sort of finding that he wants from them. (Time expired)