Senator GEORGE CAMPBELL (5:25 PM) —When the debate on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 was adjourned before question time I was raising a question as to why the urgency for the introduction of this legislation, given that the matter had been referred under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 to an inquiry by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Such inquiry is due to report to the minister by June of this year. Obviously one has to come to the conclusion that the introduction of this legislation is a blatant attempt by the minister to circumvent the outcomes of the AIRC inquiry.

If the minister wanted to ignore the inquiry, if he felt that the inquiry was not going to bring down a set of findings that would allow him to run the sort of agenda he wants to run, which he spelt out in the letter he sent to the Prime Minister and in the speech he made to Freehill, Hollingdale and Page in February of this year, then clearly he could have introduced legislation here which would have amended the Workplace Relations Act and abolished the inquiry altogether. Instead of that he has seen fit to introduce legislation in here dealing with the question of youth wages while, parallel, the Industrial Relations Commission is looking at the whole issue and is due to report to the minister in June of this year.

Once again, this demonstrates that this government and this minister in particular are not driven by a desire to implement good policy. They are not driven by a desire to put policies in place that will benefit the section of the community those policies are supposed to be targeted at. They are driven by an ideological agenda, a political agenda, which has as much to do with the minister's ambitions to be Prime Minister of this country as it has to do with trying to get young people into employment.

The message is clear in the letter to the Prime Minister. The minister clearly spells out the government's agenda for cutting youth wages, for keeping the wages of young people down. He again spells it out in the paper to Freehill, Hollingdale and Page in February this year. That agenda is a key focus of both those documents. The government's whole agenda on wages from when they came to power—despite the rhetoric they put before the Australian people in 1995, and in 1996 prior to the election about no worker in this country being worse off—has been exactly to achieve that. Their whole political strategy, their legislative strategy, is about setting in place the circumstances to cut real wages in this country, to create the same sorts of circumstances that apply in many countries overseas—to create a class of working poor. Young people are a part of that target in the wages agenda of this government.

It is as if a panacea has suddenly arrived—that if we keep the wages of young people down, if their wages are less than we pay to adults, then they will suddenly get employment because we will create jobs. I think the minister referred somewhere to 300,000 new jobs being created for young people in the current situation—a view that has been utterly rejected by both the ACTU and AYPAC.

But the reality is that junior rates of pay are not the problem in terms of unemployment of young people. If they were, then the problem would be easily resolvable. I will just give you an example in my own state. In the 12 months to December 1998, the average full-time youth unemployment rate in the Illawarra statistical district was 27.9 per cent. In the Richmond/Tweed/Mid North Coast statistical district, the rate was even higher—35.8 per cent. In comparison, adult unemployment for the month of December 1998 was 10.9 per cent in the Illawarra and 12.9 per cent in Richmond/Tweed/Mid North Coast. The reality is that, if young people worked for nothing in both those districts, you would not create enough jobs to significantly reduce the unemployment level. It is a nonsense to suggest it.

Over the past decade or so, as a result of structural changes in the economy, many entry level jobs have disappeared out of our economy. The number of apprenticeships and traineeships have fallen. The number of job opportunities in the banking industry and the finance sector—which was a major employer of young people—have gone. They have been displaced by technological change, privatisation and corporatisation and a contraction of the public sector. Through structural change, we have abolished thousands and thousands of what were essentially job opportunities for young people, and they have not been replaced within our economy.

It is also true to say that those structural changes in our economy that occurred right throughout the 1980s and the 1990s occurred in conjunction with the application of junior rates of pay. The fact that junior rates of pay applied under our award system through the 1980s and the 1990s did not help to alleviate the impact of structural change on job opportunities for young people. Growing unemployment amongst young people continued throughout the 1980s and the 1990s because of that structural change and not because of any significant shift in the rates of pay that young people were paid over that period. It is a fallacy to suggest that somehow or other keeping pay rates at a lower level is going to all of a sudden contribute to a huge demand or a groundswell for employment of young people in the community.

Senator McGauran interjecting—

Senator GEORGE CAMPBELL —Senator McGauran, you will have your opportunity to get on your feet and demonstrate exactly how the young people are going to be employed. Show us where the 300,000 new jobs for young people are going to be created in this economy as a result of your policy on youth wages. You get up and demonstrate it, and I will listen intently to your contribution, because it will be just as hollow as every other contribution you have made in this chamber since you have been a senator.

We continually get bombarded in this place with political rhetoric saying, `If you only do this 50,000 new jobs will be created there, 100,000 new jobs will be created here, 300,000 new jobs will be created there.' None of it has been demonstrated. None of it has, in fact, been targeted in terms of where those actual jobs are or where they can be created as a result of these policy changes. I do not think we ought to spend too much time dealing with or being concerned about that type of rhetoric.

In the last 20 years, we have seen a fall of 18 per cent in real wages for young males and a fall of 12 per cent for young females. On the other hand, real wages for adult males and females have risen by seven and 12 per cent respectively. In fact, over the past decade, the gap in wages between young people and older adults has grown—the disparity has widened. Despite that fact, there are a greater number of young people unemployed today than 10 or 12 years ago—and, as I said previously, it has nothing to do with the issue of wages.

The 1997 inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training heard from Ms Felicity Thomson of the Queensland Retail Traders and Shopkeepers Association. In relation to subsidies to encourage employment, she said:

I definitely find that most employers are not interested in the fact that they have to pay a salary . . . they are more interested in getting the right person for the job in the long run and whether that person is going to perform to the standards they require.

That argument, I would suggest, is just as valid with respect to the question of junior rates of pay. It is, in fact, strengthened by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in its own publication, Review , of December 1998 in an article entitled `Youth Employment and Junior Rates' in which it said that, in a survey by ACCI of 400 businesses, the reasons given for employing juniors were: preference to train their own employees—of major importance, 27.4 per cent; willingness of juniors to do certain types of work—18 per cent; and lower wages for juniors—third on the list at 17.5 per cent. So wages is not the determining factor in decisions by employers to employee juniors—to put juniors on.

In a press released dated 5 September 1998, the minister says he believes that by encouraging junior rates of pay, more young people will be employed, giving more of them a `toehold in the labour market. Without them, young people would be competing against more experienced adults for jobs—they would be squeezed out and left with little opportunity for getting a start in life.' That is very clearly not the case.

AYPAC, the Australian Youth Policy and Action Coalition, agrees with the position of the Labor Party: there is no evidence to suggest that young people's jobs will be jeopardised if the Senate votes against this bill—no evidence at all. It is interesting to note, however, that funding for AYPAC, the peak national youth affairs body, was cancelled in December 1998. Further, AYPAC has been denied observer status at Dr David Kemp's national youth round table as the organisation has criticised government policy in the past. It appears that, as soon as a lot of community organisations express a point of view that is not consistent with the policy agenda of this government, all of a sudden they seem to have real difficulties in getting funding to continue their operation. It appears that funding decisions by this government to community organisations are not predicated upon the contribution those organisations are making in the community but upon whether or not they are prepared to toe the policy line of the government.

The reality is that the Australian Industrial Relations Commission is conducting an inquiry into the question of youth rates. That inquiry has been going on just on two years. It has had a wide range of submissions to it in terms of what ought to be done in the area of youth wages. There are a variety of proposals, as I understand it, that have been put before that inquiry of ways and means to deal with this question. It may well be that that inquiry will find that there is more than one way to skin the cat in terms of this issue; there are a variety of mechanisms that can be applied to deal with the questions of wages, wage rates, wage relativities of young people in employment, which go to the question of skills and training and the type of policy settings that were adopted by the Labor Party when it was in government in terms of the youth trainee wages, which is one element of the process.

It appears that the inquiry's outcomes or findings have already been prejudged by this government. They are not concerned to have the views of an unbiased umpire. They are not concerned to listen to the findings of a group of people who have had a long period of experience in dealing with the issue of wage fixing, in dealing with the issue of industrial relations matters and in dealing with the issue of youth in employment. They are not concerned to try to understand the myriad of arguments that have been put before that inquiry or to look at the suggested outcomes that that independent tribunal may come up with in terms of dealing with these issues.

The minister has already circumvented the inquiry. He circumvented it some six months ago. He has not shown the slightest bit of interest in what the independent umpire might find in terms of how to address this issue. Why? Because this government has got an ideological bent against workers. It has got an ideological bent against their organisation. It has an agenda that is driven by serving the needs of capital, which the minister himself has said his agenda is, that is his only purpose for being here. It is driven by a desire to cut real wages. No-one in this community across the spectrum believes any longer in the rhetoric of 1996 that no worker would be worse off in this country, because there are thousands and thousands of examples out there in the community that repudiate that statement of the Prime Minister.

Senator McGauran —Real wages have gone up.

Senator GEORGE CAMPBELL —It is true real wages have gone up. What feeds into that? The huge boost in executive salaries. Don't you know how average wages are calculated in this community? Don't you know that, when salary increases at the top go in, they boost average weekly earnings? Don't you know that, when there is employment at the lower end of the spectrum, average weekly earnings go up? Don't you know that, when people on low incomes are unemployed, they go down?

Senator McGauran —That is false.

Senator GEORGE CAMPBELL —Is it? Come around some day, Julian, and I will give you a lesson in how wages and wage fixing, not wage fixation, operate in this country, because you obviously do not understand. (Time expired)