Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent
The Australian
May 01, 2009
JOBLESS teenagers will be denied the dole unless they agree to undertake training under a government push to prevent the creation of a new generation of long-term unemployed.
And Kevin Rudd has offered state governments a share of a $100 million funding pool if they lift Year 12 retention rates toward 90 per cent within six years.
Speaking in Hobart yesterday, the Prime Minister said he would not allow young people made jobless by the recession to "do nothing" and would instead tighten eligibility rules for the youth allowance to press them to gain skills for use during the inevitable recovery.
And the "quid pro quo" would extend to families, with the parents of unemployed people under 20 years ineligible for Family Tax Benefit Part A unless their children were in training.
"We cannot allow, and we will not allow, as governments the skills and training needed by a growing modern economy to skip a generation because of the global recession," Mr Rudd said after state and territory leaders backed his plan at a meeting of the Council of Australian Governments. "We don't want young Australians to be out there doing nothing. We want them to use this time of economic downturn to get new skills, to prepare themselves to re-engage once the recovery kicks in."
The latest official figures show there are 78,259 people aged 16 to 20 who are neither studying nor employed and are receiving the youth allowance.
Throughout the economic downturn, Mr Rudd and Employment Minister and deputy Julia Gillard have been working on policies to avoid the trend of previous recessions during which governments reduced training, leading to skills shortages and long-term joblessness.
In a speech in Melbourne last month, Mr Rudd proposed a new "education and training compact" with young people, under which he wanted all under-25s to earn or learn. Yesterday's COAG meeting fleshed out the rhetoric, with the leaders agreeing to require all people aged under 17 years to be working or at school or full-time vocational training.
People between 17 years and 20 years will be provided with training places, along with people between 20 and 25 who have lost jobs and need to retrain.
And the Government will tighten eligibility criteria for the allowance, denying it to people under 20 and without Year 12 or equivalent qualifications unless they are at school or engaged in vocational training. "If young people and their parents want to receive government benefits, the quid pro quo is that the young person is working or earning a Year 12-equivalent qualification," the Prime Minister said.
The state and territory leaders also agreed to work to lift the Year 12 retention rate from the current 74 per cent to 90 per cent by 2015 -- advancing a previously established deadline of 2020.
Mr Rudd said there were proven links between increasing retention rates and higher economic productivity.
He said he wanted to turn the adversity of the recession into a training opportunity, ensuring that when the economy improved, young people, including the unemployed, would be skilled and ready to drive the next wave of national economic growth.
"We don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past whereby young people who lose their job become the long-term unemployed of tomorrow," Mr Rudd said.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, acting as spokeswoman for the leaders, said the real importance of the program was to ensure that young people did not "fall through the cracks".
Opposition employment participation spokesman Andrew Southcott said Labor had not addressed the central issue of "disappearing jobs" for younger Australians.
Additional reporting: Patricia Karvelas
This type of re training /training scheme /scams are mandatory for when Labor governments are in power,due to their high unemployment economic policies,they are always necessary, so as to remove the thousands of young people from the unemployment figures,they are still unemployed,there are just no jobs for them, and indeed a good number of them are unemployable as they are victims of Labor's socialist 'education' system, and as such have nothing to offer employers, however their name will never appear on the unemployment lists.
Former Labor PM Keating used these scams throughout his reign to full advantage.
Australians will soon have "school children" with average ages higher than that of their teachers.
The unemployment figures should no longer be regarded as a measure of non productive citizens, rather the number of people on social security should be the measure of the failure of Labor policy, given the way the Labor Government and it's fund raisers and financiers the Australian Council of Trade Unions hides the consequences of their disastrous social and economic policies.
Thousands of these 'trainee's" will be placed on disability pensions due to drug,alcohol and mental trauma, guaranteeing them and their partners never to have to work again as well as receiving numerous social security add on's and privilege's.
It's interesting that Comrade Rudd announces this scheme/scam in the footsteps of Hussein Obama recently securing the passage of Civil Service bill in the US.
I hope the Australian people are not going to be subjected to the same type of indoctrination proposed by the Hussein Obama administration.
Examples in Video's below.
I am sure the Unions would love this,especially the Teachers Federation.
The official Hussein Obama hand book, training video on how to be a good busy body in your neighborhood and how to collect information on your neighbours and their children.
What happens if you say you don't want to pledge allegiance to Hussein Obama ? do they paint an X on your front door? cut off the water to your house or dump rubbish on your lawn?
or does someone come around to counsel you ?
What happens if you say you don't want to pledge allegiance to Hussein Obama ? do they paint an X on your front door? cut off the water to your house or dump rubbish on your lawn?
or does someone come around to counsel you ?
The last time the civil service and training scams were implemented on such a grand scale by a Socialist Government (NAZI Party) the outcomes were not very human friendly.
Of Course Hollywood just loves a Messiah,so typical of their "slobbering love affair" with their teleprompter in chief.
CAUTION you will need a bucket as you see and hear these lick spittle
Hollywood Idiots and beautiful people, try and out crawl each other to Hussein Obama's feet in order to be the first to lick them.
CAUTION you will need a bucket as you see and hear these lick spittle
Hollywood Idiots and beautiful people, try and out crawl each other to Hussein Obama's feet in order to be the first to lick them.
Hussein Obama speaks highly of Comrade Rudd,he recently praised Comrade Rudd for increasing Australia's troop commitment to Afghanistan by another 450 troops,in contrast to his berating former Conservative PM Howard for not contributing at least 20,000 Australian troops to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 but then again Comrade Rudd and Hussein Obama share the same political ideology of international Socialism, and both are leaders of Socialist Party's, so I guess Hussein Obama can do without those extra 19,550 Australian troops.