We need to invest in our own people and their better ideas. Ending tax avoidance would enable the Govt to do just that!
The only way is to completely jettison the current convoluted complex collection system in its entirety and replace it with a stand alone unavoidable expenditure tax.
Set at just 4.8%, this tax will raise more NET revenue, than that currently collected by all three tiers of Govt.
The loss of the GST could be offset by a direct funding model for both public health, education and urban/interstate rail.
The tax rate can be microscopically varied region by region to control either inflation or stagnation, simultaneously if required!
Meaning, interest rates can be set at historic lows indefinitely, with all that would mean for the economy and job creation.
The rate can also be temporarily varied/forgiven to promote development, or cooperative enterprise, where that is desirable.
With the world's lowest tax rate installed, the Govt. needs to provide cheap clean energy, to have the energy dependant high tech companies queuing to relocate here.
Thorium, cheaper than coal is a good bet, and local supply is the other.
Up to 50% of the energy created in the power station is lost in transmission lines, and somebody has to pay for those losses.
Very adjacent local supply would ameliorate most of that and quite dramatically reduce reticulated energy costs!
Most homes and high rises can be powered by their own biological waste.
Currently we inject energy into it and then flush it out to sea, where it does nothing but harm, when instead we could extract endlessly sustainable energy from it, and create other endlessly sustainable, highly profitable, offshoot industries from that endeavour.
The economic activity created by the proposed changes, would repay any outlays; and require every able bodied person to contribute.
Investing in our own people and their better ideas, would do the same, in fact, we'd likely have to emulate Germany, at the height of her economic power, and import guest labour, to make up the annually increasing labour shortfalls.
Rhrosty.

A timely article. I am watching parts of the northern suburbs of Adelaide fall apart due to youth unemployment. Parts of Elizabeth are topping 43 per cent for people 15-19 years. That's worse than the very worst of the Great Depression.

I have been commenting on older job seekers and workers for the last ten seven years or so through my research, journalism and interest in generations and demographics, but the youth unemployment issue is so dramatic and so under reported that it eclipses any fall out from the Boomers (super, pensions, etc).

I am very concerned that between recruitment prejudice (against young people) and the lock-step functionalism of our educational institutions, that we are failing our young people badly.

Surely the major reason for youth unemployment is the passage of the Fair Work Australia Act in 2009. It is now very difficult for employers to dismiss people. Unsurprisingly businesses are not going to take the risk with prospective employees looking for their first job. The Labor government has taken care of its union mates but made sure that the youth of Australia cannot get on the career ladder.

If there is one thing that recycled Kevin is good at, it is the delivery of spin infused with gross exaggeration, as he has displayed since resurfacing from the back bench.

He does not recognise that the governments that he and subsequently Julia led, contributed to growing youth unemployment. The substantial increase in the cost of employing labour flowing from passage of the Fair Work Act, coupled with the substantial increase in energy costs flowing from the government-enforced green energy schemes and carbon dioxide tax, the mining tax, complemented by low productivity, a high $A, and growing uncertainty, have all contributed to making employers unwilling to hire labour.

The recent depreciation of the $A will ease some pressure on trade-exposed industries, but apart from tinkering with the carbon dioxide tax, Kevin does not propose to do much about the other factors.

Unfair dismissals could go, as a trade off for much higher job start payments.
Which would still need to be temporary or limited to say six/twelve months; or five years, if the beneficiary is enrolled in an accredited study course and is prepared to relocate after graduation.
If twelve months is not enough time to find a job, then perhaps the recipient ought to be left with little other choice, than paid military service?
This outcome might just create the missing work ethic or missing self esteem needed to hold down a job or succeed?
We also need to train people for actual jobs, not something that is just not available?
An arts degree is a possible road into other disciplines, not a guarantee of future employment.
There are already enough fully qualified professors hacking taxi cabs, without creating training paradigms that simply add to their number.
Employment service providers, ought to be compelled to earn their money by training people to job ready standards and real jobs, not just send them here there and everywhere, chasing positions that could've been already filled/no longer exist?
And charge them and or the Govt. exorbitant fees for the "activity"!?
And despairing young people need to understand, what doesn't kill you, only ever makes you stronger, or that simply giving up, leads nowhere.
Yes it's tough, but then so was the Great depression that their grandparents/great grandparents lived through.
Today's generation, have never ever been truly tested, and have had it far too easy for most of their lives, courtesy of very liberal parents?
They need to toughen up, smarten up and decide to try and then try again, given it is the only way anyone has, to realise their fondest dreams or ambition.
And don't be afraid of stepping stones/lessor jobs and or experience, that eventually lead to the career path they want to follow!
No experience, no matter how menial, is ever wasted!
Rhrosty.

There will always be unemployment because of a shortage of money. Money costs nothing to produce because it is only the medium of exchange but our financial system has hi-jacked the medium of exchange and caused massive poverty on a global scale.

Private banks in the West now create from nothing,all the money to equal increases in our productivity + growth.The more growth we have, the more debt we incur.

We should never have sold off 4 State Govt Banks and the Commonwealth since our taxes have increased because our Govts now borrow from private OS banks. The debt can never be repaid unless we sell of our resources for a song.

While all of Kellie's points are valid, the huge elephant we're stumbling around in the dark is the sad simple fact that the jobs are gone.

And they're not coming back - at least not in our lifetimes.

We stopped making things and started getting other countries to make them because their wages were cheaper.

Then we stopped talking to customers because a machine could do it instead and machines don't demand award rates.

Then we realised that an underemployed casualised workforce could be much better controlled and intimidated than a permanent workforce made uppity by job security. And casuals don't show up in unemployment numbers.

Then we realised that we didn't need people hardly at all in order to make money. All we needed was a giant ethernet and some creative investment scheming to generate billion-dollar capital gains for people who already have billions of dollars, and all for about 2 minutes work.

And at each step of the way, our governments did the bidding of their billionaire masters, who hated all those restrictions that were forcing them to put people before profit. One by one the restrictions were dutifully lifted.

And if you don't believe just how bad this wonderful globalised world of ours is getting, have a look at some freelance job websites. There are people there with higher degrees and decades of workforce experience who are making job bids that pay less than $10 an hour - and I'm talking about the US and UK, not India or the Philipinnes.

No change of government and no fancy government work initiatives are going to reverse over three decades of neoliberal destruction of the global workforce. If there is any hope at all for a working future for today's young people, it lies in people-led movements to overturn our neoliberal conditioning that only business creates jobs. In fact, business is the natural enemy of employment.

A sterling post, Killarney!

Kevin (Berlesconi) Rudd should stop waffling on about how important our youth are whilst he blows all the money we'd set aside for them. He'd be much more suitable to exploit his looks by joint the Southpark crowd.

Its not just youth unemployment, its also the exploitation of young employees. No-one wants to offer them a full time job, even if they are capable and available. My friend's daughter finished school last year and wants to work and save money this year. She found part time work with a national electronics retailer but is always offered different hours each week at different times. She works between 9 and 20 hours a week. She is expected to be available to fill in at short notice or to accept without complaint that she is suddenly not required. She would love to work full time, they have the work, and still advertise for staff, but will not offer her longer hours, always juggling the roster amongst equally frustrated young employees. So she has found a second and third job in local restaurants, has told the retailer that she needs to be available for those jobs from 5.00pm, and repeatedly gets rostered on late on those evenings 'by mistake'. It is made perfectly clear to her that she counts for nothing and is just a replaceable cog in their money-making machine. Its a pretty depressing start to a working life.

Even the unions are out to make it harder for Aussie youth to get jobs, by making them more expensive to employ. The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association and other unions representing large numbers of young workers, such as the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, are seeking to extend full adult pay rates to teenage workers across the economy if a retail industry test case before the Fair Work Commission is successful.

Raycom,
Our resident unionist Belly would be the best person to ask about that.