Page 1054 - Week 04 - Thursday, 18 June 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
dramatic steps in this area I think now is the time. I think that that kind of dramatic effort can be found in some aspects of Liberal Party policy on youth and employment, in particular on the question of giving much more flexibility, much more freedom, in the area of youth wages and apprenticeship-type wages.
We have in this community a great breaking of the assumption that there is a chance to get into the job market when you are young and build your way up towards permanent, stable employment as you get older. That whole assumption has been broken through the events of recent years. We need to take some steps to provide not just for suitable employment, suitable wages and suitable conditions for those who already have jobs but also for the capacity of those who do not to get into the market in the first place. That must be among the most important criteria the Government could possibly pursue at the present time.
I would say, Madam Speaker, that, if the Government opposite is not inclined to listen to the view of the Liberal Party in the ACT on this matter, they might care to look at the views of their own colleague, the Premier of Queensland, Mr Goss. He said on Monday of this week, in a report in the Courier-Mail, that he would support a new system of youth training wages at much lower rates than present awards so that unemployed youth could get a job start. That is a very important point, Madam Speaker. He is not talking about slave labour. He makes reference to that concept and clearly that is not acceptable in this community in this day and age. But there is a question of whether or not people are being priced out of the market at present by the way in which the youth wage system is structured. The Courier-Mail report said:
Mr Goss said he felt that so many young people "just wanted a start". "At the moment the bottom rung of the ladder is just too high for them," he said.
I would respectfully agree with those comments. Let us do some fairly innovative thinking about this. I am not saying that we necessarily should throw out the whole youth wage system - of course, that is a very big step - but it may be that we can provide enough flexibility in the system to admit many more hundreds of young people in this Territory to the very first step in getting long-term employment, and that is entry into the job market at whatever level.
Croatian Community
MRS CARNELL (4.49): Last week a group representing the Croatian Women's Group came to see me. The Croatian community has some 7,000 people living in the ACT. Many of these people have been affected personally by events in the former Yugoslavia. This is because many of their friends and relatives have become casualties or, alternatively, they do not know where they are as they have very little contact with their homeland. I am sure the same thing can be said about other groups from the former Yugoslavia.
Last year the Croatian Community Association applied for a one-off grant in order to employ a counsellor - somebody who could help those who have been badly affected personally by this conflict, and also somebody who could help their young people come to grips with the sorts of pictures they see each night on
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .