PRINIMISET E
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
INTERVIEW WITH DERRYN HINCH, CHANNEL SEVEN
22 JULY 1992
E& OE PROOF COPY
DH: Prime Minister Keating, good evening.
PM: Good evening Derryn.
DH: You called it, did it work, or should I say will it
work?
PM: Well it was as good a meeting as I think we could have
had, all the people who are material to this issue
being resolved, that is the two issues, the long run
traini , ng from school to work, and picking up those
jyoung people-for whom that transition will come to
late. Thiat is, those who are currently unemployed,
all the people that need to be talking about that were
at the meeting today and it was a very good meeting.
DH: The instant criticism you will get from people is
where are the jobs, we have to have them now.
PM: Well that's in terms of the current younguemlyd
that's about 125, 000 of them. But we are doing two
things, yesterday as part of this I announced a very
big breakthrough with the Commonwealth and the States
forming a National Training Authority. Now what that
will do is put into place along side the universities
a technical and further education system of substance,
and quality, and status to take kids from school to
work, to train them in school to work in the long
transition, which we have been trying to arrive at for
many years.
DH: With this $ 720 million for TAFE__ I remember some
months ago you were sort of bullying the States and
saying if you don't come along with me we will start
our own system and freeze you out of the money, right?
PM: That's right. Well you have got to push and shove to
get anything done Derryn, and we said to the States,
look, we don't mind this being cooperative but it has
to happen. We can't leave kids, half of the school
leavers about 150,000 each year untrained, we can't
let this happen. Because the jobs for untrained
people which were around when you and I were kids are
not there now.
DH: But you have said recently that we are the first
computer generation that's hurting the job pool etc,
we can't train kids for dead-end jobs. But there are
people out there now who will take even a dead-end
job.
PM: But the job doesn't exist Derryn. What was your first
job in journalism?
DH: My first job was as a cadet for a newspaper.
PM: Well mine was a clerk. Yours may still be there, but
mine certainly isn't. I think most of those jobs are
not there at any price, they are gone. Because
basically the jobs are done by machines, by computers,
by facilitation. So, the trick now is for the jobs
that are there, the trained jobs, they are only going
to be taken by people who are trained and yet we left
so many young people untrained. So what today was
about, and yesterday, is getting the kids out of
school who don't go to university to train them for
these jobs.
DH: There is an irony here that Malcolm Fraser, when he
had high unemploymenRt figures, he would say things
like stay in school, keep them in the schools longer.
Now you are saying, it didn't work for him, you are
saying stay in various training courses, stay in
school as well.
PM: But it has worked for us. When we became the
Government three kids in ten completed school, seven
left untrained, not even at secondary level. Now that
is seven in ten completing secondary school. We hope
soon it will be nine in ten, and they will go into
university in the 50 per cent extra places we have
created and they will go into a modernised technical
and further education system. In other words, in a
period of seven or eight years Derryn, in Australia we
will have made a twenty year educational change in
about six or seven. And it is those people, young
people forgotten in the days of Malcolm Fraser, seven
in ten not completing even secondary school, let alone
university or TAFE, they are the ones to be picked up..
But the ones for whom that transition have left
behind, that's the 120,000 who are unemployed now.
DH: There's nothing for them.
PM: Well that's what today was about as well, that was
trying to set up traineeships and work experience and
training opportunities to have business take those
people up.
DH: Whenever you give business a hand it looks like you
are handing just more profits to business even when
times are tough. But why don't you bite-the-bullet
and do things like get rid of the 17.5 per cent
holiday loading which would make factories and other
businesses, take a lot of pressure off them come the
Christmas holidays? Why don't you do that?
PM: Well because in this, I think someone made the point
today that holiday leave loading represented I think
four cents an hour for the employment of a young
person. I mean compared to the rates we are talking
about it is an infinitesimal change.
DH: And yet small businesses and factories they tell us
that come Christmas they dread it because they shut
down for five weeks and they have got to find all that
money, that 17.5 per cent for every employee all the
time.
PM: The people who are likely to be picked up in
employment here are people who would not be largely
commercially employed. That is, we will be offering
as a result of this meeting, young people the
possibility of work experience and training and
possibly linking that to a job later. Linking that to
an employment opportunity later. That is, training
with employment and going on to work experience. Now
that is the way of getting people back into the
workforce, many indeed for the first time into the
workforce, and that will mean we will have to agree to
a structure which business will take people up in.
DH: And that's for stopping the rotten future, but it's
not helping now.
PM: No, no that's for now. This if for the current group.
You see a lot of today's discussion was about how we
settle on a set of wage arrangements which fix the
current group of unemployed, while at the same time
being part of the longer run transition.
DH: This is the $ 3.00 something an hour training issue?
PM: No, that was John Hewson's thing, we rejected that.
The meeting rejected that today, and the young people
rejected that. They won't live on $ 3.00 an hour.
DH: No, I am saying the $ 3.00 in addition to whatever they
are earning, if they are in training they may be
earning $ 4.00 or $ 5.00 an hour, but then if they are
doing some other work they will get extra?
PM: Well we are looking at a minimal level of pay, but
with training involved. Whereas, under John Hewson's
proposal if you pay someone $ 114.00 a week, which is
less than $ 3.00 an hour, and then they work three days
a week and have two days training they are only
getting three fifths of $ 114.00, they are getting
$ 65.00 a week. In other words, under our proposition
we are looking at propositions where we give people
work experience and training. So they are not just
getting some work experience and then it dies and
finishes but they get an accredited training to go on
and transfer their skills to some other place.
DH: Mr Prime Minister, what about payroll taxes, now
that's a State issue I know, but why not put pressure
on the States to say wipe your $ 5 billion in payroll
taxes around the country on the condition give say,
per cent of it back to people who hire new young
staff, and may be 25 per cent or some figure to people
who invest the money that they save in new equipment,
what about those sorts of plans?
PM: I don't think that's the real problem. For a start I
don't think that State budgets could stand that kind
of loss in revenue, but I don't think that's the
problem. The problem here is that the jobs for young
people untrained have largely disappeared. And people
will put them on, provided that it suits them, and we
say we only want to see them put on if they get
training experience to give them accredited training
to take to another job, in other words we give them a
future. The Government doesn't mind therefore coming
to the party with a job subsidy, to be in there to
encourage an employer to put them on, to give them
that work experience and that training, and that I
think is going to matter. Now if States wish to give
relief on payroll taxes, a matter for them Derryn, but
most of them can't afford to.
DH: I think Joan Kirner who can afford it less than
anybody, has said she'll consider it.
PM: Well, and good on her, but I think that won't be the
key thing. Even if they said look the payroll tax is
off, employers are not going to hire unskilled young
people for jobs that are not there. They'll-only take
them on as part of dealing with this problem, that is
from an Australian fairness point of view, trying to
do something useful to take these kids up and give
them experience, and where we can train them and give
them a future.
DH: Now all is obviously going to cost you money, may be a
lot of money, have you been tempted to renege and to
wipe the promised tax cuts?
PM: No, no, the tax cuts are further out and these kinds
of changes can be made without any problem in relation
to the tax cuts. There's also propositions been put
to us to raise income tax levels. But the revenue
consequences, the revenue benefits are so small as to
not matter in the general run of the size of these
budgets. We can do this, but what we want t o do is
something good and sensible and structured and
planned, that does something real about this group of
current young unemployed people but at the same time
fits it into the longer run transition.
DH: What about some of the other things that have been
floated recently, and I don't necessarily agree with
them, like youth_* corps1 orpeace corps or consc~ zjpin1._
PM: That got a run today and had a lot of support at the
meeting. That is had support of the National Farmers'
Federation the ACTU, Archbishop Hollingworth, people
looking at rural employment schemes, 2rovincial
-mp-1Qy! Jint slemes, regional-employment schemes.
DH: Are they a chance?
PM: They're a chance. Yes, they've got a place, I think
they've got a definite place in the scheme of things.
DH: that didn't they, with tree planting and things
like that?
PM: Particularly in regional areas, where there isn't the
urban industrial base and in provincial areas, in some
the provincial cities where local government can do
things immediately and well. As well as the States,
in regional areas. So I think that is something which
did have a fair degree of support today and which I
think we can usefully do.
DH: Have you ever been unemployed?
PM: I was for a while, yeah.
DH: What happened?
PM: Well it's a pretty lousy feeling. I actually know, I
think I know what people feel, because you do feel as
though the doors are all shut, that no-one wants you.
It's a terrible feeling. I think its got to happen to
you to know what it's like.
DH: One of the biggest criticism of Canberra, and you get
it all the time, you're in your ivory tower, you're
too far removed, there is that famous quote from
Margaret Whitlam once who said that inflation was a
lot of hooha. Do you wear any of that, do you accept
any of that?
PM: Well I was unemployed at one stage for about six
weeks, and it's a pretty unpleasant experience
knocking on doors trying to find a job and sort of at
the time no-one wants you. You get the feeling
awfully quickly there's something wrong with you.
DH: Now I say to you, people who talk about the Summit
that's been on the news tonight and people talk about
it all this week. Say you Paul Keating, as a father,
not as a Prime Minister have a teenage son who hasn't
worked in six months and has a mate who hasn't worked
and maybe a girlfriend who hasn't worked. What do you
say to him to keep his spirits up, or get them back
up?
PM: Well I think you've got to say something real, and
that is the government's got to do something that
defies the commercial judgement of a business that
would otherwise not hire them.
DH: But if you say that the Government's got to do
something you're son's going to say that bugger
Keating in Canberra, I mean what do you say to your
son to get his spirits back up and to say to him, OK
this is how you can get through it.
PM: Well the main thing is _ growtecho, n omic growth, as the
thing gets going, the main thing is to train people.
That's why the higher retention rates in school is the
right thing. They then get training in universities
or technical education and they find the trained job.
It's the untrained jobs that's the problem. And it's
the ones who are now untrained, that have fallen out
of school, that where trying to pick up. When I say
that the Government are doing something, I mean in the
context of business and the unions and community
groups to find these employment experience and
training.
DH: One last quick question, we are running out of time.
This was the Youth Summit. What about the 400,000
though, the lonfg term unemployed, who will be
unemployed some of them through 1995-96?
PM: Well that's where in the budget we will look at labour
market prq. ams for the mature aaed unemplpyqd people.
The big remedy to unemployment Derryn, is obviously
economic growth. The economy is already growing, we
probably will clock up the better part of 2 per cent
for the year June. That's faster than Europe's
growing, it's as fast as North America's growing.
We'll probably grow faster next year. But there'll
still be those people, who you correctly identify who
are unemployed, and the labour market programs, that
is the work experience and support programs of the
Commonwealth, this year already, are handling about
400,000 people. And we intend to look at that further
in the budget.