Scott Morrison rejects criticism he's neglecting older Australians with youth wage subsidy
Scott Morrison has accused Labor and unions of pitting the young against older workers after warnings youth wage subsidies exclude people aged over 35.
At a press conference on Thursday, the prime minister brushed off calls for more safeguards in the $4bn jobmaker hiring credit as Labor sharpens its attack about workers left behind and the potential for abuse of the new program.
Although Labor has decided to support the government’s plan to accelerate income tax cuts and more than $30bn in business tax concessions, it has not reached a final position on the hiring credit program, which is contained in a separate bill.
In addition to voting through the Coalition’s higher education reforms on Thursday afternoon, the Senate agreed to return for an extra day’s sitting on Friday to deal with the omnibus tax bill.
Guardian Australia understands the opposition will consider pushing the hiring credit bill to a Senate committee for further scrutiny and the Australian Council of Trade Unions is pressing Labor and the crossbench to amend it.
Labor and the ACTU are concerned credits of $200 a week for those aged 16 to 29 and $100 a week for those aged 30 to 35, do nothing for those aged 36 and over and may incentivise businesses to lay off older workers.
The shadow employment minister, Brendan O’Connor, has also raised concerns that the hiring credits bill gives the government power to introduce any form of payment to encourage job creation or workforce participation.
The bill contains none of the program’s safeguards, giving the government a blank cheque to change its rules or introduce new programs without approval from parliament.
O’Connor told Guardian Australia the scheme “encourages insecure work” and there is “nothing stopping the government handing a blank cheque to distribute to whichever businesses in whichever electorate they see fit” under the current bill.
“This government has a terrible track record when it comes to doling out funding – think sports rorts.
“It is important that this new wage subsidy scheme is designed properly and with integrity and we will continue to ask to see details of the proposed scheme from the government.”
The president of the ACTU, Michele O’Neil, told Guardian Australia “There are serious flaws in the jobmaker scheme as it stands.
“The program gives employers the ability to replace full-time jobs with multiple part-time or casual jobs, and will not create the secure jobs which we need to restart the economy.
“Working people need safeguards to be put in place to this potentially damaging program.”
Labor’s shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, told Guardian Australia the government’s “decision to deliberately exclude 928,000 Australians from job-maker [hiring credits] will keep the unacceptably long jobless queues even longer”.
“If Scott Morrison was serious about driving down unemployment and kickstarting the recovery he would not be leaving almost a million Australians aged over 35 behind.”
The Coalition has promised two safeguards – that businesses must increase both their payroll and headcount to be eligible – and points to existing protections against unfair dismissal in the Fair Work Act and age discrimination laws.
But even employers privately concede that youth wage subsidies will skew hiring decisions, giving the young an advantage over other groups at risk of long-term unemployment including people with a disability over 35 and people over 55.
Morrison told reporters in Canberra that encouraging hiring of young people was “exactly what the hiring credit is designed to do” and argued the safeguards would “ensure that it is not abused”.
“Youth unemployment rate is more than double what the national unemployment rate is,” he said.
In September youth unemployment was 14.3%, more than double the general rate of unemployment (6.8%).
Morrison warned that youth unemployment “sets people up for a life of welfare dependency” and claimed the Coalition had reduced welfare dependency to 30-year lows.
However, according to a recent Parliamentary Budget Office paper, the unemployed are spending longer on benefits than ever before. This was particularly true for women over 45, with the PBO paper showing the proportion of women in this age group on jobseeker benefits increasing sevenfold since 1991.
Morrison said the budget was “for all Australians” and aimed to bring Australians together.
“There will be voices that will try and set young people against older people, women against men, jobs in one sector versus jobs in another sector – they are the voices of division that will undermine the future economic prosperity of all Australians.”
Morrison said the unnamed “voices of disruption [and] division” and “come to this place to fight, not to build”.