By Sean Malloy
With a youth unemployment rate of 34%, Australia risks sacrificing an entire generation to the insane “rationalism” which decrees that people's lives are less important than the “economy”.
Paul Keating's youth summit, to be held in Canberra on July 22, is little more than a set piece public relations exercise. It will announce some “new” jobs that already exist. More seriously, it will seek to spread the illusion that lowering wages, perhaps under the guise of “training”, will result in more jobs.
Keating knows, for example, that Coles-Myer has agreed to take on 5000 young people immediately under conditions of extremely low wages, the “training wage”, and government subsidies. Unions have heard that Coles-Myer is preparing at the same time to sack 1000 full-time workers from K-mart.
Forty people will be attending the conference, which will not be open to the media or the public except for Keating's opening address. Over half of the invited delegates represent business.
“This will not be a youth unemployment summit”, said Democrat Senator Karin Sowada, “it will be a pantomime designed to sell cuts in youth wages.”
For the young people denied jobs, unemployment means more than financial hardship. It also means bad physical and mental health, constant anxiety, breakdown of relationships and destruction of self-esteem.
In the June 24 issue of the Australian, Dr Belinda Probert pointed to the possibility of unemployment creating “aimless, disaffected, unemployed youths endangering the well being of us all”.
The basis for a mass of “aimless, disaffected youths” already exists in Australia. An indication of this is homelessness, which is directly linked to unemployment and lack of income. The Human Rights Commission Inquiry into Homeless Children found that 20-25,000 people under 18 were homeless. A further 50,000 are at risk of becoming homeless.
Statistical peaks and troughs of male suicide follow the peaks and troughs of unemployment. Linked to this is drug and alcohol abuse, which in turn creates further physical and mental health problems.
Health suffers enormously from unemployment. Unemployed people cannot afford to see a doctor and pay for prescriptions, nor can they afford high quality food, housing and clothing. Food and clothing are expenses most frequently forgone by young people living on unemployment benefits.
Unemployment also creates anxiety, leading to other physical and mental health problems. For example, unemployed males are 53% more s 43% more likely.
Unemployed men are 267% more likely to suffer mental disorders than working men, while women suffer double the rate of mental disorders
of working women.
Visiting CES or DSS offices becomes a source of anxiety and contributes to damaging the self-esteem of unemployed people, particularly young people.
Activity tests also undermine self-esteem by implying that unemployment is the fault of the individual, who hasn't done enough to improve interview skills, appearance or education, or isn't looking hard enough.
Low self-esteem is the first step to a plethora of mental health problems. It is a contributor to problems like suicidal tendencies, self-mutilation, anorexia and long-term depression.
