Michaelia Cash has announced that the Morrison Government will hand $10 million of tax payers’ money to employer groups through the failed $4 per hour PaTH ‘internship’ program.
The money will go towards ‘industry pilots’ provided by employer groups to ready young people for $4 per hour placements which replace jobs paying proper minimum wages.
Minister Cash claims that the program gives young people much needed experience, however data from her own department shows that the program has struggled to find participants since its inception and mostly functions as a way for businesses to replace jobs paying award wages with unpaid workers supplied by the government.
Under the program, every employer who takes on an ‘intern’ gets a one-time payment of $1000 in addition to the government paying the interns’ ‘wages’, creating an obvious incentive for employers to replace properly paid workers with PaTH interns.
As noted by ACTU Secretary Sally McManus:
“This Government has no respect for young people, taking away properly paid jobs and replacing them with $4 per hour, churn and burn jobs.
“They have also cut $3 billion from TAFE, taking away training opportunities for a whole generation of young people.
“Why would an employer hire a young person and pay them a proper wage when they can get someone for free, with a $1000 handout and no commitment to keep them once their ‘internship’ has finished?
“Scott Morrison is paying employers, most of them big businesses with healthy profits, to destroy entry-level jobs generations have relied on to support themselves while studying or jobs that provided a foot in the door with fair pay.
“Six years of this Coalition Government has meant young people are inheriting a worse standard of living than their parents. Programs like this show the Government does not care.”
