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PRIME MINISTER1
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
LAUNCH OF THE YOUTH TRAINING INITIATIVE PROGRAM,
PARRAMATTA TOWN HALL, PARRAMATTA, 2 DECEMBER 1994
E& OE PROOF COPY
Thank you very much for that Introduction, Eden. Caroline and Ian, my
ministerial colleagues Simon Crean and Ross Free, and Paul Elliott, the
Member for Parramatta and his wife Julie, the Sarah Redfern High School
and young Australians. It is a very great pleasure for me to be involved today
with my colleagues in this initiative which came from Working Nation.
Because, I think the thing you have to know is that 11 years ago when those
of you who are now completing High School were 7 years of age, or those of
you who are in Year 11 were 6 some of us were thinking about a new
Australia. We were Imagining a country completely different than the one we
had at the time. Because you know enough about our history to know why we
inherit this vast continent, and have it as one to ourselves, we were part of
the old industrial culture of the West European/ North American world under
what used to be called Imperial preference. And we built up an industrial
base in this country which became antiquated and out of touch and
unproductive, and when the countries we traded with went into trade blocs
like Britain went into the European Community -Australia was left with this
ring fence of tariffs, and inside it a great heap of industrial archaeology.
Before that, of course, as the clip said, there were jobs aplenty. But, they
were unskilled jobs for low-value products. But, the history of the post-War
world with the rise of the great states like Japan and Germany, and the
continuing growth of the big industrial economies like the United States has
put the wealth into value added and into production which had with it
Innovation, and we in this country have had to now try and re-adapt Australia
in a relatively short period of time.
Now, that meant two things: how to employ our people what do they do, and
what sort of jobs will they have? And particularly our young people how
can we encourage them to be part of a society which produces good and
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innovative things, a clever. country that has an international future? One
thing we all did know, was that we could never hope to be a clever country
when those of you in Years 11 and 12 were 6 and 7 years of age, we knew
that only 3 out of every 10 of you completed secondary school because that
is as it was. And that the rest that went back out were largely untrained 7
out of 10 untrained, Now, how can you develop a smart society with that?
And how could you look a young person in the eye and say, " We have a
place for you"?
So, we had to do 2 things remodel the Australian economy quickly,
rebalance It and take away all the ring fences, open Australia up to the world,
and at the same time, start to bring up the education of our young people.
Now, it is one of the great matters of pride to me, that in this year that same
cohort of young people it is not 3 in 10 completing secondary school, it is 8
in 10. 8 in 10. And 40% of that output is going through universities, and all
of those thousands of places have been added to the system since 1985.
Indeed, about 16 universities of the size of Sydney University have been
added to the system by this Government since 1985. But, because that is
you don't have to be a mathematician to work out the great majority of
young people were coming out of the system and not going to university, and
many untrained. Indeed, the majority untrained.
So, what we have focussed on in the last few years is developing vocational
ed -ucation, or as you would call it, TAFE. So that we have a national TAFE
system, and a national system of accreditation and a training certificate which
will give you mobility in this country, and the capacity to pick up a job. Now,
Simon Crean, Ross Free and I have been working now for a number of years
with some of our colleagues to build up that TAFE system. Because we have
got the universities well and truly up and running, the challenge now is to
build that TAFE system up, and to have it there so that as you leave school in
Year 12, you go in to that training and this period is the period we focus on
to 19 as a period of vocational preparation. In other words, the school to
work transition. So, this is what the Youth Training Initiative is about.
We had 2 things about young people in Working Nation: one was the
Australian Youth Traineeship Foundation, which is about encouraging young
people to start streaming themselves into vocational education in Years 11
and 12, while at school. That Is, to start taking on work experience and away
from school training, and picking up units for accreditation in TAFE while at
school. And Simon, Ross and I launched that in Gosford about 3 months
ago. Today, we are launching the second part of It, and that is the Youth
Training Initiative. And, the reason we are doing that is that about 14% of
students are dropping out of both school and further study. In other words,
they are not going to TAFE even if it is there, they are not going on) to a
tertiary education they are simply dropping out. Now, we have a view, and
that is that we are optimistic about this country. You saw this week we are
growing now at about 6% GDP growth, we have got inflation at under we
have had 400,000 job growth since the election. Now, this is a workforce of 8
million 400,000 jobs since the last election is a phqpomenal rate of
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employment growth. But we want to -stream young people ' into that flow of
jobs, and we believe that there is great cause for optimism about Australia
wo have never been mora w. mpatitive, wie have rievw Ucwi muiis iiriuvallve,
our education system is up and really driving product innovation, we are now
exporting to the Asia-Pacific as we have never done before we are actually
sitting beside the fastest growing markets in the world for the first time in
Australian history, and you might know that with APEC Asia Pacific
Economic Co-operation in a very historic declaration I was involved with in
Indonesia 2 weeks ago that we have agreed all of us the countries of the
Asia-Pacific, to develop a free trade area. Now that means that Australia will
be part of a large market that it has never been part of before, and the
exciting possibilities are there for young people to look at some of these
countries, and some of these great cities like Shanghai in China where you
see this enormous activity, or in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, or Jakarta in
Indonesia these are all the possibilities. You could be working for an
Australian company and very easily find yourself there, then find yourself
back in Australia, then find yourself in North America the range of
possibilities for you now Is endless and entirely invigorating.
So, with that sort of prospect and this sort of growth, we want all of you, that's
every one of you, to take the opportunities of a tertiary education, a
vocational education, and we don't want you slipping through the cracks of
the system into unemployment where your self esteem drops, where you think
the world is not interested in you, and you start turning your back on society.
This place is too rich and it has got too much going for it, for that to happen.
So, the Youth Training Initiative is something we've thought up which will start
from the first of January next year and it will work in this way: if you're under
18 and you've been unemployed for 13 weeks you'll be eligible for
assistance. Now, that assistance comes by way of a case manager. A case
manager is a person who individually makes a relationship with you and
starts to understand your educational attainments, your personality, what
your aptitudes are, what you might do. So, you have that one to one
relationship, you don't just go down to a CES office and give your name
across the counter looking for a job, or worse, not go at all. We actually have
this case management, one to one relationship where the case manager
helps you to Identify your needs, to search then for suitable education,
training and work opportunities and to help you coordinate access to services
such as labour market programs.
Now, a labour market program is something where there is a job subsidy and
there Is structured training. So, this person assesses you, tries to understand
what you are capable of, gets you back into structured training or education
or into work. In other words, we don't let you fall through the system,
somewhere. So, the Youth Training Initiative is one of those links perhaps
one of the last links in this hierarchy of changes to take young people who
are part of that 14 per cent, who run the risk of falling out of the system and
believing that nobody wants them and society isn't interested in them. This is
our way, the government's way of saying, we are interested,. we will pick you
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4
up, we will individually enquire about you, we'll take a personal interest in you
arid we'll put you back in the system. So, this is what we are launching today.
We're launching the Youth Training Initiative. And, it also means if you're
assessed as being at high risk, that is, the likelihood of you being at high risk
of long term unemployment because of, say, your attitude, your attainment,
your family background or something a combination of factors leads one to
assess such a person as being at high risk of long term unemployment
then the case manager will start managing you immediately. In other words,
there is no 13 week wait.
So, we think that this is a great social improvement, The whole of Working
Nation was about a social Improvement. It was about saying that those
people who've been out of work for 12 months or more and that can be
people In their middle age, or young people who may be unemployed 18
months or two years that we say that this is not good enough for Australia.
This Is not good enough for a country which believes in fairness and equality.
And, we will pick you up, case manage you, train you, give you a job subsidy
and get you back into work. Now, I told you a few minutes ago that since the
election just under two years ago, we've had 400,000 job growth. About
100,000 of those have gone to the long term unemployed. This is the cause
of much satisfaction on the part of the government. Because, were we
speaking about this 10 years ago and we had 400,000 jobs, maybe 20,000
would have gone to the long term unemployed, or 25,000. Now, we're talking
about 100,000 so a quarter of the jobs are going to the long term
unemployed. And, that is because of what we call the labour market
programs and those labour market programs are actually focusing these
people up.
So, Working Nation was about that. It was about streaming the long term
unemployed back into work, it was about saying as we all move on as a
country we will move on together, we won't have an underclass where the
long term unemployed are the shock absorbers in the system who carry the
burden of economic change. But, rather, we bring them along with us and we
move them along together. But, whatever we do in this respect, as a
government, we are entirely certain we must do that and more, with our
young Australians. That is, if we believe that Australia has such, now in the
nineties, a low Inflation and high growth future producing innovative products
and exports and linkages to the rest of the world, we know that, properly
trained, the jobs are going to be there for young Australians. Because, our
experience In the eighties was the same in the last ten years we've created
nearly two million jobs. Young Australians got more than their share of those,
but those who are not trained can't, and won't. And, that's why we want to
train them. Now, I don't know that there are any other countries that have
programs quite like this, we think this is a pretty revolutionary approach.
Because, we are saying, as a matter of national policy, we won't let one
young person slip through the system if it is avoidable, and that we will go
and case manage them and strike up a personal relationship with them, and
get them back into structured education or training, or into work experience.
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So, you look at that panoply of things: tertiary education, the massive
participation rates now in schools, the growth in tertiary education, the
building of vocational education, the Australian Traineeship Foundation, for
students in years 11 and 12 to start streaming their way into work experience
while at school, setting up their career path while at school. And, then, those
who are untrained, the 14 per cent, the ones who drop right out of education
and training this initiative is about getting them back in. So, you run right
across the spectrum, from those with the highest TERs going on into tertiary,
to those who have fallen out of the system, we say the system should have
everybody. So, that's what It Is about, that is what we've been seeking to do. And, I am
delighted to find so many people in education, so many young people
responding to these programs and doing so with a confidence, that I
believe young Australians must have. One of the key things I would like to
see this government achieve, indeed the country achieve, is that the optimism
we have is passed on to every young Australian that they feel good about
Australia, they feel good about themselves, they feel good about the nation's
identity and its sense of self confidence, and they believe that there is a place
in there for them. This is what this is about. So it is with very great pleasure
Indeed, that today, I launch this Youth Training Initiative on behalf of the
Commonwealth Government, and believe that every young Australian, as a
con-sequence, can have the hope that if the system doesn't work quite right
for them, in double jig time, we'll have them back on the track and back in this
society that cares for them, that nurtures them and that loves them. That's
the sort of country we want.
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