Cash outlines Liberal youth job plan

Campaigning in Mandurah with Canning MP Andrew Hastie, Senator Cash outlined the Coalition Government’s plan to address unemployment in the Peel region, which she admitted was lagging behind the rest of Western Australia.

Employment prospects for locals would be improved by the free trade agreement between Australia and China, the government’s investment in Nambeelup’s Transform Peel project, which will see the development of a new 28,000 hectare business park and agricultural production zone near Mandurah, and a new program to help young people find and keep work, she said.

Minister Cash said the Youth Jobs PaTH Programme, a $840 million project announced in the recent federal budget, would target 120,000 young, vulnerable job seekers across Australia to prepare them for the workforce and trial them in jobs with government support.

“There are youth out there that have no basic skills at all, from knowing how to set an alarm to turning up to work on time, how to dress appropriately for the workplace and how to shake your hand,” she said.

“So we quite deliberately designed the first part of the program, which I call getting our youth ready, for two and three week blocks of intensive training to teach them the basic skills that employers have said, ‘we cannot bring them on board if you don't have them’.

“We're going to make that compulsory after you've been on welfare for five months, you will have to do it and I think that's a good investment.”

Mr Hastie said it was important young people had workplace skills that businesses are looking for.

“A lot of these kids have grown up in families where they aren't mentored on work ethic that business owners rely upon to make a living and so just getting them to the point where they know what a hard day's work looks like, this a great government initiative,” he said.

Senator Cash said even though a few businesses were closing, she had noticed there was a hunger for the opportunities created by the China-Australia free trade agreement and new technology.

“We as a federal government have to ensure that we are creating opportunity for every business in Australia should they choose to compete internationally,” she said.

“From the federal government perspective, you have us doing everything we can to ensure we can compete internationally, you have us backing small business itself, because we understand we need to, but then locally we have the Transform Peel project which we’ll go into bat for every step of the way.”

She said an important part of the Transform Peel Nambeelup industrial park would be its focus on agricultural businesses, which are expected to benefit from the free trade agreement with China.

Mr Hastie said local businesses couldn’t wait for the Nambeelup project to be implemented.

Labor’s Canning candidate Barry Winmar could not be contacted for comment.