The Allan Labor Government has slashed youth crime prevention funding at a time when regional communities are facing a statewide crime crisis.
Labor’s record shows a drastic cut in support, with youth crime prevention funding dropping from almost $13 million annually between 2014 and 2022 to just $541,000 a year over the past three years.
In contrast to Labor’s neglect, The Nationals have a real plan to restore safety and confidence across Victoria.
Our $100 million Safer Communities Plan will introduce tough new laws alongside targeted prevention programs to make a difference in every community.
The plan builds on the Break Bail, Face Jail policy to ensure consequences for first-time and repeat offenders.
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Key initiatives include:
• Jack’s Law for Victoria – giving police stronger powers to remove weapons from our streets.
• Restart – a Victorian-first residential responsibility and discipline program for serious and repeat offenders.
• Youthstart – coordinated community-based interventions to help at-risk young people make better choices.
The plan focuses on community safety through both enforcement and early intervention.
Families in the Ovens Valley and across Victoria deserve to feel safe in their homes, at the shops and on the streets.
Our plan delivers consequences for offenders, but also provides the discipline, support and hope young people need to turn their lives around.
Tim McCurdy, Nationals' MP for Ovens Valley
Australia facing shortfall of 83,300 tradies
Trade shortages loom as a major threat to reaching Australia's Housing Accord target of building 1.2 million homes by 2029.
Due to several factors, including an aging workforce and competition for trades from other sectors - such as infrastructure and renewables projects – the next generation of trades has not kept pace.
It is estimated there are around 277,800 skilled trades workers in the residential building industry, which highlights the extent of the shortfall.
The additional trades needed also only represents the net increase in the workforce that will be required.
The number of new additions to the workforce will need to be even greater than this to offset the number of workers as they leave the industry.
A range of solutions are available to address Australia’s estimated 83,300 tradies shortfall.
To start with, it is important that pathways into these trades is open and transparent and as high school students finish their senior school education a trade is considered a viable career option.
Ensuring there are readily available and current best-practice training opportunities for people looking to begin a career in the industry, improved pathways for skilled migration, and attracting workers from other industries or segments of the construction industry all also have a role to play.
The housing shortage that is driving up housing costs for Australian households can only be reduced through efficient delivery of new housing in greater quantities than has been achieved in the past.
The workforce of the housing industry must grow if this is to occur.
Mike Hermon, Housing Industry of Australia executive director – future workforce
Young women now earn more than young men
Women up to their early 30s now earn more than men per hour on average, new research by the e61 Institute has found.
The analysis also found that women under 35 are more likely to find work than men, with an unemployment rate of 5.5% compared to 6.5% for their male counterparts.
This is the largest gap in two decades and reverses patterns from the mining boom when young men had better employment outcomes.
Overall, the hourly gender pay gap has come down from 11.5% to 8% over the past decade.
The e61 research paper titled How the Care Economy is Reshaping the Labour Market found that rising wages in the care economy accounted directly for about 0.5 percentage points of this reduction.
Other factors include rising female educational attainment and an increased participation from prime-age female workers.
The sharp expansion of the formal care sector and relatively high wage growth in the sector, driven in part by Fair Commission decisions, has significantly improved employment and pay for women, especially young women.
Women are moving into care roles in far greater numbers than men from unemployment and also from lower-paid, high-turnover sectors such as retail and hospitality.
Post-pandemic, the average hourly wage in care for 20–24-year-olds has been around $3.50 higher than the economy-wide average, and over $5 higher than in the male-dominated construction sector.
While care jobs are typically low-paying overall, they represent relatively high-paying roles for younger workers, thereby lifting the hourly pay of young women in particular.
While men face no formal barriers to working in care, and many already do, deep-seated gender norms and social factors have been slow to shift
Despite recent wage gains, the research noted that care jobs still lag most other jobs on flexibility, pay, opportunities for progression, and overall job satisfaction.
The analysis also found the expansion of the care sector has improved overall job stability.
Matthew Maltman, research economist e61 Institute
