When it comes to jobs and houses, Australia is not a free country. Let me begin with barriers to getting a job. For the low-skilled, poorly educated or socially disadvantaged, or for those who lack connections or even self-confidence, the barriers to entry to getting a job are serious indeed. When I started in the housing industry 40 years ago, every tradesman had an apprentice. Apprentice wages were very low, as apprentices were treated very much like students and received the equivalent of a student allowancelike every other student in the country. Young people who were not particularly suited to or interested in academic study attended technical schools and then did an apprenticeship. Since then, we have made employing apprentices such a nightmare that few tradespeople are willing to take them on, yet there are thousands of unemployed young people who would love to learn a trade and get a start in the workforce. Whilst 'education, education, education' has become society's mantra, forcing young people to stay on to year 12 when they are clearly not enjoying it is both foolish and wrong. It condemns them to a life of misery.
I spent many years working on building sites. I came across many young lads not enjoying school, causing trouble at home and getting in trouble with the police, who then started working on a building site. I can tell you that by Friday night they were too tired to be hooning around in cars, setting fire to brush fences and spraying graffiti at all hours of the night. I know hundreds of tradesmencarpenters, bricklayers, tilerswho left school at 15 and have gone on to lead very happy and successful lives. These same early school leavers now all have cars and boats and two or three investment propertiesand they send their kids to private schools. They are also members of the local Country Fire Service or surf-lifesaving club and they coach local football or netball teams. They are good citizens, yet they received very little in the way of formal education. As the old saying goes, it is not what you are good at at school that matters but what you are good at in life.
I note the Newstart allowance at the moment is worth about $240 a week and the minimum wage is about $640 a week. Between $240 and $640 there is a no-go zone where anyone who offers or accepts anything in between is breaking the law. In fact it is even worse than that because we do not permit anyone to work for any amount between nought and $640. We praise people who work for no moneyworking up to 40 hours a week in op shops and nursing homes and for the RSPCAbut we do not allow them to work for more than zero until you reach $640. If you are allowed to work for nothing, surely you should be allowed to work for something. It is absurd.
Australia has been groaning under this yoke for a century. In circumstances like this, sometimes the only way to achieve a breakthrough is to consider a break-with. So when I decided to run for office to go and do something about this, a well-known Adelaide businessmanno names, just initials: Roger Drakesaid to me: 'Bob, you will not get in. Politics is designed to keep people like you out.' But given the clear emergency that now exists with respect to youth unemployment, in particular tragically high levels of youth unemployment and underemployment in my home stateover 40 per cent in some areasthe time has surely come to allow young people who want to to opt out of the workplace regulation system and allow them to work at rates of pay and under terms and conditions which they consider are best for them.
Of course there is outrage when I say these things. I hear, 'They might be exploited.' But where is the outrage when these same young people end up on drugs, get involved in crime, suffer poor health, become pregnant, get recruited into bikie gangs or even commit suicide? No, there is only outrage when they want to take a job that suits them but does not suit the government. What percentage of employers exploit young people anyway? Is it one per cent, five per cent, 10 per cent? So we stop the other 90 per cent from hiring people because of some who might behave badly. Trucks career out of control and kill people. Do we take all trucks off the road? Of course not. Athletes cheat and take drugs and fix matches. Do we ban sport? Of course not. Society cannot function if you apply that principle. And, yet, we apply it to people wanting to get a job.
As has been widely reported, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister are open to suggestions from the crossbench on where savings might be made to get the budget back into surplus. Well, here is a silver bullet, Prime Minister: the government could reduce its welfare budget, reduce its $5 billion job placement program, reduce a dozen social illsall costing millions of dollarsand, at the same time, start collecting income tax if it would simply allow those young people who want to to opt out of the workplace regulation system. There are literally thousands of jobs in rural and regional Australia where young people, in particular, who are living at home rent-free, with no commuting costs and a low cost of living, would be able to get local jobs which suit them.
Just yesterday, I had a young Y20 delegate to the G20 Youth Summit in my office seeking my support for, and I quote, 'Ensuring young people have flexibility in negotiating workplace agreements.' Young people are telling me this is what they want. Let me be clear about one thing: I am not advocating a return to Work Choices. I was a vehement opponent of Work Choices. In fact, I visited this place on a number of occasions, meeting with ministersthey know who they are because they are still hereand imploring them not to proceed along the Work Choices path. I said: 'Leave Peter Reith's 1996 Workplace Relations Act alone and simply allow those who want to to opt out. Those who wish to stay in the workplace regulation system could do so. But those who did not want all that stuff could opt out.'
A lot of employers and a lot of employees were very comfortable with Peter Reith's Workplace Relations Act because it told them what to do. But there were some employees who did not want to be bound by it all; hence, my proposal to allow them to opt out. Well, here I am nine years on saying the same thing. As history shows, those ministers did not listen to my advice last time, and we went from a 600-page Workplace Relations Act to a 2,000-page disaster called Work Choices. Now we have its successor, the Fair Work Act, comprising 3,000 pages of rules and regulations, which is all fine for those who want them. But what about those who do not want them? I have no problem whatsoever if people want to work within the regulated system with its awards, minimum wages, unfair dismissals, joining of unions and so onno problem, whatsoever. Just don't make it compulsory. People do things for their reasons, not ours.
