SUBJECT/S: Unemployment; Temporary work visas; casualisation of the workforce.
AARON STEVENS: We welcome the Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Brendan O’Connor into the studio this morning. Hello.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR, SHADOW MINISTER FOR EMPLYOMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS: Good morning Aaron.
STEVENS: Your visit coincides with a regular segment that we do with Darryl from CTC Labour Hire. Good morning.
DARRYL LAPWORTH: Good morning Minister. Good morning Aaron, how are you?
STEVENS: Good to have you both in the studio because obviously it’s a serious issue in Central Queensland. Looks brighter in 2017, things have got better jobs wise throughout 2016, so it’s a good time. It’s a transitional time for the workplace situation, isn’t it?
O’CONNOR: Look, there are some positive signs, absolutely, and let’s hope some of the projects that have been foreshadowed proceed. There are issues too though. Underemployment is very significant. Nationally there’s 1.1 million Australian looking for more work and not being able to find it. There’s still 700,000 unemployed. There’s issues around access to apprenticeships, which is in decline. That’s something we need to attend to. So, look, always trying to find a positive, but we need to make sure that we look at the areas that are challenging and do better where we can.
STEVENS: There was some figures that came out only this week, alarming figures about the amount of people who were turning down jobs to stay on welfare. How do we make working attractive?
O’CONNOR: It shouldn’t be that hard. If you don’t take up a reasonable job – and that’s pretty much any job – when you’re unemployed, if there’s no good cause for that then you’re not entitled to benefits. And I think we need to make sure we get that right.
Mutual obligation is: the nation tries to offer you work and provide you support, in the meantime if you’re not looking for work – sincerely looking for work – then there should be consequences. That’s why we call it mutual obligation. You’re obliged to look and if there is work offered to you, you’re obliged to secure that employment.
STEVENS: Is that easy to do, Darryl?
LAPWORTH: We’ll give you a couple of cases. Certainly for us, we’ve tried to get people into employment, we’ve offered people jobs that have been unemployed, they’ve turned them down. We’ve then rung Job Active and they’ve said there’s not a lot that we can do about it because then Centrelink will just say no, they will go through hardship so we can’t get them off the unemployment benefits. So there’s no real cause for them to get of it, I think in some respects.
O’CONNOR: Certainly, that’s something you might want to take up with the Government, because they’re running the show, not the Federal Opposition. But look there are circumstances where you can’t just cut income, if for example, there are kids in the house. But our expectation is you’re provided support when you’re looking. If you’re not looking then there needs to be consequences. If you literally turn down job offers that are reasonable job offers we need to examine that. And Centrelink has a role to play there.
STEVENS: Does the Work for the Dole system work well enough?
O’CONNOR: The labour market program Work for the Dole has never been a particularly effective one. It’s always been a catchy name. I don’t think it’s been - if you look at the figures it hasn’t been very good in terms of results.
You definitely have to make sure job seekers are participating, they’re acquiring skills. They should be learning job skills, if you like – how to work in a team, how to work under supervision, the responsibilities of turning up. I mean the simple things, Aaron, the things we might take for granted.
There are people in this country, in this town, that don’t have the skills necessary just to work socially in a workplace, and we need to make sure they do have them.Dressing appropriately, arriving on time, working under instruction, working in a team. Those things that we need to provide quite often to young job seekers who don’t often have role models, not in their own house. I mean we have families across this country and here too that suffer intergenerational unemployment. They don’t have any role models in the workplace. And that means they have to be, if you like, taught entirely the basics of work culture and we need to make sure we’re doing that.
STEVENS: I know how Darryl feels about this, it’s something we’ve discussed in this segment many times, but the amount of money that’s been put into training and not actually putting people into work. Is that balanced?
O’CONNOR: Firstly, you can waste money. No doubt.
STEVENS: Yes.
O’CONNOR: And there are too many courses that are not really providing the skills of emerging demand in the labour market. But of course, quite often the training providers are in it really for themselves. Not all of them, there’s some great and reputable companies, and there’s of course TAFE. But I think if you look at our education system we’re actually falling behind our competitors globally.
STEVENS: Absolutely, yes.
O’CONNOR: That is a real problem. We’re in a global knowledge-based economy. And if we’re falling behind our neighbours as we seem to be we need to make sure we get the investment right there.
STEVENS: Once again, NAPLAN results released this week were terrible.
O’CONNOR: Frightening. As for training, I think the VET sector we have made a mess of it over a very long period and everyone’s to blame. I’m not here to talk on a partisan level. I think what we need to do is firstly understand the labour market - where are emerging areas of work and what is happening to the labour market? What skills do we need? And we need to dedicate taxpayers’ investment in areas of emerging demand so that people going into the labour market have the skills of those areas.
What’s happening too often, event in universities, but certainly in TAFE colleges and the like is young people and others that are going into the training are being trained in areas where there’s either a glut of skills already or where the jobs are disappearing.
STEVENS: Sure.
O’CONNOR: And then they go, well why am I competing against 50 people for one job? Well because that area is shrinking we have to encourage people to go to where the jobs will be for the future.
STEVENS: That’s the way forward, Darryl?
LAPWORTH: It certainly is. We advocate the targeting of dedicated training towards jobs that are out there at the moment. We spend too much money, I think, as a country on business courses and these sorts of things, lower level business courses.
O’CONNOR: There’s another reason for that too, and this is what I talk about with the misuse of temporary workers. Temporary workers are absolutely required in some areas of our labour market. But why we know there were so many shoddy courses, and why there wasn’t that many complaints, is many of the students that were on those shoddy course, those Mickey Mouse courses, were from overseas and they’re on these student visas so they can work here in our labour market. Now, if we need their labour and skills, fine. That’s a legitimate demand, we need it.
STEVENS: Absolutely.
O’CONNOR: But if they’ve just come in here, gaming the temporary immigration system, and therefore doing a course just solely on the basis of working, then you can understand that’s going to bring our training sector into disrepute and it also, again, is going to displace local workers.
We’ve got to get that balance right between the use of temporary workers that are here to do good things and help our economy, and at the same time make sure that we don’t continue to have in excess of 12 per cent youth unemployment - in the case of some parts of Queensland it’s 20 per cent youth unemployment. That’s a real problem.
STEVENS: With the Shadow Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Brendan O’Connor and Darryl from CTC as we do on a Wednesday morning. Darryl, you’ve been alarmed by criticism of the casualisation of the workplace.
LAPWORTH: Yes I have, and I know that a lot of politicians want fulltime work. When there isn’t fulltime work, or you’re scaling up or going into a new process or going into new regions you then do need quality staff that are skilled and are ready to go today. Now, they can then be put into fulltime work like a number of our people have, which is fantastic. But it’s a stepping stone until you build up production.
STEVENS: Should we be putting more money into those casual positions?
O’CONNOR: We need casuals as a form of employment, but there is a concern where people have permanent families, but casual jobs. A fulltime mortgage and a part time job doesn’t work. Of course entry into the labour market quite often is going to be casual work. Of course there’s going to be work that needs to fit into the demands of business. That has to happen too. But too often, if you look at what’s happened in recent times - and I’m not blaming Darryl for this, this is change in the nature of the labour market, we need to look at it, because there’s been just short of 100,000 fulltime jobs lost in the labour market in the last 12 months, whilst there’s been a growth of 130,000 part time.
STEVENS: Which is alarming.
O’CONNOR: It is alarming when you look at the ABS figures and 1.1 million Australians are saying I’m looking for more work and cannot find it, on top of the 700,000 unemployed. That’s 1.8 million Australians either saying I want some work, or I want more work.
Of course part time and casuals are a very important part of our labour market, however of course people have got obligations, family obligations. They’ve got to pay the rent or the mortgage, they’ve got to put food on the table. It is harder for many of them.
It’s ok if you’re a kid at home, still with your parents and you’re working casually in the hospitality area and things like that. But it does worry me that so quickly the fulltime jobs are disappearing. And the areas of the labour market that are growing are looking to rewrite the way in which work happens. And I don’t think that’s in the interest in the longer term for our society. The one thing about Australia is, you put in a hard day’s work you get a decent wage.
STEVENS: Absolutely.
O’CONNOR: And you should be rewarded. But you also should be rewarded with some level of certainty. If you asked every occupational group in Australia, whether they’re tradies or labourers or professors or whatever, the number one concern they have in the workplace, it doesn’t matter where they work, they’ll say job security. Now you can’t guarantee a job for life, we know that. The world has changed. But there needs to be a situation where most people who’ve got to look after others – families and so on – they should have some guarantee that there’s some level of certainly. And I think a fulltime job is what people are normally aspiring to and I think we need to be able to work out a way that in most instances we can deliver that. Because too often the part time jobs are replacing full time work, and that’s why you see people struggle. I don’t want us to go down the American path where tens of millions of Americans are working five jobs and still below the poverty line and no security. That’s not what I want to see for this country.
STEVENS: Nineteen past eight. Good morning. We’ve got the Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Brendan O’Connor with us and Darryl from CTC. We’ll take a break, we’ll come back 4922 7990 if you’d like to join the conversation.
**BREAK**
STEVENS: We’re with the Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Brendan O’Connor and Darryl from CTC. Tell us about your visit to Central Queensland today.
O’CONNOR: Well, I’m catching up with a really fine company, Joy Global, and catching up with apprentices that have just finished their apprenticeship and are off into fulltime work. So, one of those great stories.
STEVENS: Sure.
O’CONNOR: I want to talk to them about, firstly why can they do that? How they operate? What sort of support are they getting from State and Federal Governments? What do they need to make sure they prosper as a business? We just want to work out the factors required for a business to compete in a very competitive sector of our economy and be competitive globally.
There’s some really great examples around the country, Aaron, and here you’ve got a fantastic story and I’m happy at some point to come back and tell you about that too, but I’m looking forward to talking to Joy Global today and meeting the apprentices.
There’s been 700 fewer apprenticeships offered in this electorate alone in the last few years. There’s 120,000 apprentice places disappear over the last three years. We need to find a way to train up our young people and one of the ways in reinvesting in apprentices and Joy Global, a local company, is doing a great job from what I can understand and I’m very keen to see how they do it, an encourage them along.
STEVENS: From both your point of views, obviously Adani and the future in this region is it important that these apprentices are coming through now?
O’CONNOR: Absolutely, you know you need to prepare. One of the problems we have often is when you’ve got a change in the local economy and skills are in massive demand sometimes we don’t anticipate that demand. So wherever we can see something on the horizon that’s emerging, what we need firstly is governance. We need to attend to that by helping businesses, making sure the skills are there. And of course we need to work out what companies need from governments in order to recast their business for the changing labour market and for the opportunities that are about to arise.
So fingers crossed for all of the businesses that are coming on line. And the State and Federal Government have to be working in partnership with businesses to do the right thing.
STEVENS: Really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you very much.
O’CONNOR: Thanks Aaron.
ENDS