In April 2008, shortly after taking office, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd convened the 2020 Summit. Its goal was to “help shape a long-term strategy for the nation’s future”. While some may question the overall worth of the Summit, there is no question that one ground-breaking outcome was the National Disability Insurance Scheme, arguably the most important social reform Australia has seen since the introduction of Medicare.
With spiralling youth unemployment rates across the country hovering close to 20%, a national summit on Youth Unemployment would be putting the Prime Minister’s own promise to ‘protect the vulnerable’ into action, not just universal rhetoric.
The sheer scale of these figures requires national leadership. Prime Ministers Hawke, Fraser and before them Robert Menzies, all led from the front on problems of wide social concern. The time is now right for Tony Abbott to convene his own summit, the first of his administration, and send a message on how Australia is going to go forward for its vulnerable young.
Its overarching goal should be to identify a solution to the growing endemic youth unemployment in Australia. Youth unemployment is currently just shy of 40 per cent of all unemployment in Australia. There are a quarter of a million in the 15-24 year-old age group who are not working and in many cases have never worked. That means more than one in three unemployed Australians are between the ages of 15 and 24.
Setting a Prime example for young Australians.
A Prime Minister can bring the authority, priority and momentum to national issues that will affect our future. Getting our young in work is of national importance and time critical. It’s important for the unemployed, important for their families and important for the nation’s social and economic health.
So far we lack the vision and by all accounts the resolve to support young people in this country. We have national momentum on other things such as disability and border protection, but no policy urgency on the future for Australia’s Youth. Why?
By ignoring this policy issue we run the risk of creating an entire generation of disenfranchised people who will feel alienated from ‘Team Australia’ and have little interest or opportunity to contribute to the wellbeing of their community.
It is only a few years since we witnessed the explosive reaction of the UK Riots. Riots are a complex social phenomena, but many concluded that it was young men feeling disenfranchised and a lack of connection with the affluence and growth that they saw around them. Feeling like you are excluded from mainstream society does not excuse riot behaviour, but it should be understood as an important contributing factor behind the undermining of a cohesive society.
To date, the Federal Government is failing to act on the distressing level of youth unemployment in Australia.
Why is it not creating opportunities for this cohort to find work?
And why is it focusing on designing draconian measures on the unemployed through removal of benefits for six months of every year and job application reporting?
This is all the wrong way around. If we don’t confront our political disinterest in solutions to the vexed question of youth unemployment, then it could be concluded that we are not concerned about social discontent, generational exclusion and social aimlessness amongst our young.
A view from the summit.
A national youth unemployment summit can bring the key players together to find those pathways to employment, to training and retraining, the types of jobs we can create for young people, especially the 60% who don’t go on to university.
It’s not only about secure income and empowerment, but about opportunities to be challenged and to grow personally and professionally.
Historically, one of the great employers was the manufacturing sector, but it has been in significant decline over the last decade. Not everyone is writing it off.
Craig Milne, Executive Director of the Productivity Council of Australia, said there are strong arguments for Australia staying in manufacturing and being prepared to pay a high price to do so. “Manufacturing is the sector that contains and advances the skills and capabilities that prescribe membership in the ranks of the advanced nations of the world. For research and innovation, manufacturing provides the essential ground from which future streams of products and incomes can emerge. Whatever form the economy of the future may take; manufacturing will provide the enabling foundation for it.”
If the Prime Minister is serious about protecting the vulnerable there is no better nor more important place.
