PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
PRESS CONFERENCE, CANBERRA
JULY 1992
E& OE PROOF COPY
PM: Earlier I published a document to you, a background
statement, for the meeting on Youth Training and
Employment, and a few of you expressed an interest
in me making a few introductory remarks about it and
taking some questions, so I am quite happy to do
that. Perhaps I could begin with these few points. I
think what the paper shows is that the problem with
yo-uthunemployment has arisen from changes in the
labour market over a very extended period of time,
the 1_ i960s onwards, over the last thirty years
economic, social and-technologi~ cal changes have
fairly radically altered the types of -รต bs which
young people are now competing for. On Wednesday
the National Meetina on Youth Training ! ad
Emplovment will bring together young people,
employers, unions, community groups and the
Government, and those at the meeting will benefit
from the different perspective being put, and will
tackle directly the two key issues. The two key
issues are; the longer term issue of assisting young
people to make the transition from school to work,
and the immediate issue of how best to help the
current group of young unemployed obtain employment.
So the purpose of this statement is to set out a
framework for-~ understanding and-tackling the issues
surrounding the training and employment of young
people, including of course, the problem of youth
unemployment. The ideas contained in this paper will be discussed
at Wednesday's meeting, as well of course the ideas
and proposals of other proponents. Following the
meeting on Wednesday the Government will carefully
consider the views canvassed at the meeting, that's
in the period subsequent to the meeting, and I will
announce specific measures in these areas in the
following week.
I think you will agree the Statement does contain a
lot of interesting information and perceptions on
the problems. It stands, might I say, an obvious
and stark contrast with the efforts of the
Opposition, who without serious thought have
dismissed technological and compositional changes to
the labour market for young people. They have now
approached the training issue as an afterthought and
piecemeal at that, and who crudely believe a massive
slashing of yquy h_ wages will solve the problem.
Well unlike the Opposition, the Government will be
viewing the later teenage years as a period of
vocational preparation and will be doing all that is
sensible, all that can be done to put arrangements
and resources in place, to allow that vocational
preparation to be undertaken. There is a distinct
and truly marked contrast between the way in which
the Government is approaching the issue, both on a
long run basis, in respect of the transition from
school to work, and for those in the shorter run who
are unemployed before that transition and pathways
are established. That's what the paper is about,
and of course as I say, it is in marked contrast to
the Opposition who for training, their policies,
their fightback proposals have virtually nothing for
training and they have now tried to tack training on
as an afterthought, when training is part of the
essence of such a structural shift. So I am sure
the paper will be interesting to you and if you
would like to put questions to me I will try and
deal with them.
J: Prime Minister arguing that there is in fact no
quick fix. In fact, it says by the year 2001 at
least 95 per cent of nineteen year olds should have
completed year 12 or postschool qualification,
that's a long way off from solving today's problems,
isn't it?
PM: No, no. There are two problems here. The proportion
of children completing year 12 now is over 70 per
cent, that was only 30 odd per cent in 1983. So if
we had of taken that approach in 1983 saying this is
a long-term problem that is too hard there would
. still -be 30 per cent-of kids only completing year
12. Well there is now over 70 per cent of kids
completing year 12. Getting up to the nineties is a
very desirable thing to do. So that's the longer
run transition, the school to work transition, the
pathways, the things which are mentioned in the
Carmichael Report. But there are those, as we say
in the statement, who will have lived through their
later teenage years before this transition is in
full swing and who are now currently unemployed, and
we will be focussing on them as well.
J: Prime Minister, will you have by Wednesday a form of
agreement between the States and the Federal
Governments on the TAFE, or the future, the shape of
the TAFE system?
PM: Well that remains to be seen. I have been working
on this problem now for a couple of weeks, so has
Kim Beazely, and we have had, I think, quite long
and we hope fruitful negotiations with the States,
and getting a break through here is a very tall
order, this is a system which is essentially managed
by the States, and most of the resourcing comes from
the States. The fact is they can't keep the growth
up to the system, and that's why we think there is a
case for national leadership, national policy and
national funding. But it has to be run
cooperatively, obviously, because the Commonwealth
has not been the TAFE manager, and it is trying to
construct a new system which would be a very
revolutionary change and of course an entirely
important change in the history of our federal
arrangements to be able to bring such a system
together and make it work. Now, we are still
working on it.
J: The TAFE system hasn't been that efficient in the
past, how is it going to be made more efficient by
superimposing yet another level of bureaucracy on
it?
PM: Well I think that, when you say that it has not been
efficient, the truth is it hasn't had the throughput
which the nation needed of it. As we say in the
paper we have had a 43 per cent increase in
university graduations but in terms of TAFE exits
there has been a decline. So it has not been
keeping up. What we need is national training
profiles, we need training profiles related to
industry and we need volume, we need resources, and
that can't be done without the Commonwealth, nor at
this stage can that be done without the States.
J: It is envisaged, I think, isn't it over time that an
increasing amount of the money would come from
Commonwealth sources? In that case does that imply
increasingnational control?
PM: Well the arrangement we are working on is about that
control being somewhat more diffuse between the
Commonwealth and the States, but national control we
have as an objective, certainly. Not Commonwealth
controlled. I don't know whether you meant
Commonwealth or National.
management will always be the hallmark of the
Government, and we've made that clear in recent
times and will continue to make that clear.
Q: Mr Keating out in the community there's a great deal
of, there seems to be an increasing amount of
scepticism about Government statements of various
types and the community seems to think the
Government is trying to be seen to be doing
something but not having much effect. Are you
worried that the Youth Statement could be seen that
way as well?
PM: You think that we want to be dealing in
anti-intellectual policies, that is that we don't
actually articulate policies and we don't try and
solve things lest people think we're trying to do
something. Well is that the state where our
journalism is really, where our public comment is?
Q: Mr Keating you've talked about two aspects of the
problem in the paper, the long-term one and trying
to get people into that frame of mind where they
stay in education and training opportunities longer,
it talks about the immediate short-term problems
for kids who are caught in transition at the moment.
In that context how important are the kind of youth
corp land degradation projects?
PM: You're now asking me to look at various proposals
and responses. The paper is basically there
to paint an overview of the whole problem. I mean
this has been a problem which has developed over a
long period of time and which will now only be
solved by clear paths and policies designed to make
that transition from school to work, and at the same
time, for those as I say, whose latter teenage years
have arrived now before that transition, the fine
policies which get them back into a labour market.
As we say there's some figures there about the
generation about the current young unemployed people
are actually in that unemployed pool, and the role
of labour market programs. Obviously we want to try
to get those people back into work, back into work
experience, but it's the longer run transition of
the great bulk of young people who are currently in
school that we want to see go into the labour market
with training, in properly formed paths, and if we
can do that, and if part of that can be, a
substantial change in the way in which the TAFE
system functions and works in Australia it will be a
milestone reform.
Q: the immediate problem are you tempted then by
suggestions of the kind from Peter Hollingworth
about youth corp, job corp projects?
PM: Everyone attending the meeting including
ArchbishopHollingworth will put those propositions
and weilc onsl1Wi-fhose in the course of the week.
Q: But they're out there now?
PM: Well, wait for the response.
0: Prime Minister are you keeping a very careful eye on
the row between the Liberals and the Nationals of
New South Wales?
PM: Well I've been keeping an eye on it for weeks, I
mean if you go to the country newspapers of the
areas of Hume and the other surrounding Federal
seats you'll find there's been a very bitter war
being conducted by the Liberal and National Parties
on each other, but the clear point in all this was
that the New South Wales Liberal Party is not going
to let its political imperative slip or be talked
down, in the interests of the National Party, by the
Federal Liberal leader. They say the Party's got
prerogatives, our commitments are long term, that of
the Party, and involving other long term people,
people committed long term to the Party like Wal
Fife, and they object to the fact that this sort of
careerist approach, which Dr Hewson has to his
political life is one that basically sells down the
drain the Liberal Party, long term Liberal Party
structural interests. So this is an argument of
some proportions.
Q: Sir how has that differed in keeping Leo Macleay in
his job?
PM: Sorry
Q: How does that differ then from the careerist point
of Leo Macleay?
PM: A great deal. If I said to my Party that I wanted a
change of policy and my Party said no, you would all
write, Prime Minister no longer in charge, Party
decides for him. Dr Hewson has said to his Party
that these contest s ought to be decided to favour
the National Party and his Party has said no. And
as Mr Murray said yesterday anybody who can't make
their Party deliver on such important fundamental
things if they're that weak, said Mr Murray, they
shouldn't be seeking to be the Prime Minister of the
nation.
Q: Liberals are too democratic are they?
PM: I don't think democratic would be the word for it.
The fact is the Liberal Party's got long term
organisational interests, which Dr Hewson does not
identify with, and they're reminding him of his
responsibilities, but reminding him in a very sharp
way.
Q: Can you guarantee young people that at the end of
the day we won't simply have a much better trained,
better educated group on unemployed?
PM: Absolutely, look at the ' 80s experience, people who
are training themselves were taken up in employment
and if you look at the information contained in
there about the responses by industry, lack of
maturity, school levels too low, lack of relevant
training, all those numbers, those very high 87%,
83% indicate that the absence of training is a real
impediment to getting a job. So, hankering for
untrained work in a labour market which is
technologically been subjected to great
technological change is basically hankering back to
the 1960s, in their past, the labour market of those
days is a thing of the past.
Q: But orders decide unemployment or decide employment
levels
PM: Yes, sure, orders of what products? What products?
Services. All the sort of things we now have in the
economy we didn't have in the 1960s.
ENDS