The Senate did young Australians a big favour last night when it rejected the Abbott Government’s plan to make job seekers aged under-30 wait four weeks before receiving Youth Allowance or Newstart.
The proposed four week waiting period was announced in this year’s Federal Budget and replaced its original plan for a six month wait, which was announced in the 2014 Federal Budget but also rejected by the Senate last year.
According to ABC News, the legislation was last night voted down 30 to 35, with Independent senators Nick Xenophon, Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus, along with Palmer United’s Dio Wang and the Motoring Enthusiast Party’s Ricky Muir, voting with Labor and the Greens to defeat the bill.
Greens senator, Rachel Siewert, was particularly scathing of the plan, which she labelled “cruel and harsh” and not backed-up by evidence. Indeed, officials from the Department of Social Services admitted to a Senate committee there had been no modelling to suggest enforcing such a wait would prompt young people to get a job.
The Government always faced an uphill battle getting its plan through the Senate.
Anyone with even a modest understanding of employment statistics (and common sense) would recognise that youth employment outcomes are poor not because they are lazy, but because the economy is too weak to generate sufficient jobs. This is why youth unemployment is close to its highest level since 1998 and youth underemployment is just below all time highs (see below charts).
The Abbott Government has erred badly in seeking to punish Australia’s young unemployed for no other reason than them being born at the wrong time and experiencing close to the worst employment conditions since the fallout from the early-1990s recession.
The Government’s moves are all the more hypocritical given its special incentive payments to employers that take on workers over the age of 50 who have been unemployed for more than six months – a measure that would crowd-out younger workers even more.
The Abbott Government must stop trying to eat Australia’s youth.
