The Government’s New ‘Internship’ Program Got Grilled In The Senate Today, And It Wasn’t Pretty

One of the centrepieces of the government’s newly unveiled budget is the PaTH program, an exciting new initiative that press-gangs Newstart recipients into part-time drudgework in supermarkets and fast food outlets for substantially less than the minimum wage. Ostensibly designed to give young would-be workers a bridge into gainful employment by giving them on-the-job experience they might not otherwise pick up, there’s a disturbingly real possibility it’ll just result in businesses replacing their low-skilled employees with hordes of desperate, government-funded jobseeker peons instead. Think Spongebob at the Krabby Patty fry cooker, only that’s you in the little hat with the anchor on it. Forever.

Given the policy’s only been in the public eye for a few days, it was pretty light on some pretty important details. The budget papers didn’t answer any of the knotty and potentially concerning questions a scheme like this raises, like whether PaTH interns will be given the same workplace protections as regular employees, or which businesses would be eligible to take on interns. Those questions, and many more, came up in Canberra this morning when Employment Minister Michaelia Cash fronted a Senate estimates hearing, and some of the answers were pretty worrying.

For one, the Employment Department confirmed that big chains like Hungry Jack’s, Woolworths, 7/11 and Coles will be eligible to take on interns, raising concerns that large companies may phase out regular young, low-skilled employees with PaTH interns, or at least extract 12 weeks’ worth of free labour out of them before hiring them. While an Employment Ministry bureaucrat told Estimates that “we will not permit jobseekers to be placed in internships if there’s evidence that an employer is misusing the process and interns aren’t ending up with employment on a regular basis”,  the practicalities of a young jobseeker reporting a large business engaging in deceptive practices were not explored in any real depth.

It was revealed that PaTH will cost $751 million over the next four years, even as a number of confusing gaps in the program were highlighted. Contrary to her own statements in the media earlier this week, Cash confirmed that PaTH would be voluntary, rather than compulsory. It’s also unclear exactly what is meant by ‘interns’, and what rights and responsibilities someone with that classification will have under the PaTH program — whether they’ll be entitled to penalty rates on weekends and holidays, for example. The Employment Ministry couldn’t provide details on what kind of work or work experience PaTH interns would be expected to do in their placements, or whether or not they would be supervised at all times.

Even more concerningly, it’s unclear whether PaTH interns will be covered by Commonwealth workplace compensation if they suffer an accident or injury while serving their internship. Some states do cover volunteers and interns in their workplace compensation legislation, but others don’t, and a PaTH intern who injures her back while carrying boxes in a supermarket, for example, may not be covered by the Commonwealth if the laws in her state fall short. Cash claimed that the program would have adequate accident cover, but was seemingly contradicted by one of her Employment Ministry counterparts.

Doug Cameron confirming interns on PaTH jobs scheme for young job seekers WON’T get employer’s workers compensation https://t.co/7vIlqHyBBL

— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) May 6, 2016

 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was questioned on the PaTH program by BuzzFeed Australia this afternoon, and rather than providing substantive answers to any of these questions, went on a tear about how giving young people “the experience of getting up early in the morning, going to work, collaborating with co-workers” will “change a life”. With the Labor Party and unions stepping up their attacks on the scheme, and an election less than two months away, the government’s got a lot of questions to answer if it wants this thing to help their chances of re-election rather than sink them.