Teen pregnancy, suicide rates a 'wake-up-call'

A report that shows Australia is not the lucky country for its youth should act as a policy wake-up call, the federal government says.

The Research Alliance for Children and Youth compared health, education, employment and family relationships of Australians aged up to 24 with those in other developed nations.

Overall, non-indigenous Australian youths fared relatively well in each category but not compared with youngsters from the best performing countries. And indigenous young people compared miserably on every indicator.

"Despite our economic prosperity, Australian children do not perform as well as modern society would like to think," the report said.

Federal Families and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said the report would be a "shock" to many people.

"We are falling far behind many, many comparable countries ... where we would have thought we were doing so much better," Ms Macklin said.

"We all know the shocking gap that exists between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians but ... I don't think that people are aware of the extraordinary differences between our children and children in other developed countries."

Pregnancy rates were much higher than the OECD average, and rates for indigenous Australians were the highest, the report found.

Youth road deaths are the third highest in the OECD and indigenous young people have the second highest suicide rate behind Finland.

Children of indigenous youths have the second highest infant mortality rate and recorded the lowest birth weights.

More than 15 per cent of Australians aged 18-24 years claim to experience high or very high levels of psychological distress.

Australia also performed poorly in the transition between education and employment, and family relationships.

Head of the study, Professor Fiona Stanley, said the findings suggested government policy had failed children for many years.

"If this was the Olympics, Australian's would be horrified that we've failed to bring home a single gold," she said.

Prof Stanley said Australia can do better and the indicator levels were "very policy sensitive and responsive".

Ms Macklin agreed, saying paid parental leave and a focus on early childhood education would help boost Australia's performance.

"It does need to be a wake up call ... as a nation we have to do better," she said.

Eleven-year-old Isha Menon, selected to be acting Children's Commissioner for the day, said one area of focus should be better work-life balance for families.

"Many children in my class have to go home alone and sometimes around 4.30 they are still hanging around and playing with friends," she said.

"They probably never see their parents because they work long hours.

"We must support parents to spend more time with their children."

The wellbeing of Australian youth compared to other Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations

Infant mortality: Australians 20/27

Indigenous Australians 26/28

Low birth rate: Australians 7/18

Indigenous Australians 19/19

Mental health: Australians 13/23

Indigenous Australians 23/24

Accidental injury: Australia 7/8

Education

Reading: Australians 6/29

Indigenous Australians 29/31

Maths: Australians 29/31

Indigenous Australians 29/31

Science: Australians 5/30

Indigenous Australians 29/31

Transition to employment: Australia 17/25

Peer and family relationships

Parents "just talking" with children: Australians 18/27

Indigenous Australians 17/28

Sense of belonging: Australians 11/29 Indigenous Australians 29/30

Teenage fertility: Australians 21/30 Indigenous Australians 31/31

Road deaths: Australia 20/23

Source: The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY).

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Worked for the dole and ended up injured

GREGORY WARREN THOMSON went out to work for the dole and ended up injured.

His previous job working for his unemployment benefits in northern NSW had been with the Tweed Maritime Museum, but on September 21 five years ago he was asked to present himself at a labour hire company the next day.

Not having been told anything to the contrary, he expected a similar job and turned up in similar clothing and the flat-soled shoes he wore at the museum.

Mr Thomson was taken by bus to a farm for distressed animals and told to do fencing work. When he asked for steel capped boots, which other workers were wearing, the supervisor told him no boots were available for him.

Mr Thomson, then 36, was given little or no instruction, supervision, or training and ordered to help put up a 1.8-metre fence with cyclone mesh to keep in alpacas and wallabies.

The fence was to be erected on a rocky and downwards sloping uneven area with stones and loose gravel.

To attach the mesh Mr Thomson had to work with his hands above his head, looking upwards, while walking across rubble. His feet slid and he fell down the slope into a trench.

Mr Thompson's lower left leg snapped and the bone was pushing through the skin. He was taken to hospital in extreme pain over dirt roads without any first aid. He needed an operation and was bedridden for three months.

Last week he was awarded $199,550.19 in compensation for past and future economic losses and expenses.

The District Court judge Brian Knox found Twin Towns Employment Enterprises owed Mr Thomson a duty of care. "There was an inequality of bargaining power between the parties given that the plaintiff was effectively required to work for the defendant where, and when, and how he was directed - otherwise he would risk losing unemployment benefits," Judge Knox said.

"[Mr Thomson] had very little say in the work he carried out."

TAFE teachers protest for more pay

Classes at TAFE campuses in central Victoria are expected to be disrupted by a teachers' protest in Melbourne today.

TAFE teachers are holding a stop-work meeting in Melbourne this morning as they step up their campaign for better pay and more permanent positions.

The union's Greg Barclay says poor pay is driving people away from the profession.

He says about 60 per cent of the work force is employed casually.

Mr Barclay says regional teachers are growing angrier about the way they are being treated.

"We are the most underpaid TAFE teachers in all of Australia, we're about $21,000 behind TAFE teachers in New South Wales and around about $13,000 behind secondary school teachers here in Victoria," he said.

Jobs slump hits NSW

THE tide is turning on Australia's once-strong jobs market, and it's turning in NSW first.

NSW shed 17,600 jobs last month - the worst performance of all the states and territories - while the resource-rich states of Western Australia and Queensland picked up more than 15,000 jobs each.

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, warned people to brace for a slowdown: "Employment growth is slowing and it's slowing on the back of eight interest rate rises over three years and, of course, the most difficult global economic conditions in 25 years, particularly the oil shock in recent times."

The Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, said this week that the consecutive rate rises had had a significant impact.

"The evidence is that the tightening in financial conditions, in conjunction with other factors including rising fuel costs and lower asset values, has restrained demand," he said.

Nationwide, jobs growth has slowed from its breakneck pace of last year to add just 10,900 jobs last month - leaving the jobless rate steady at 4.3 per cent.

But as a growing number of companies such as Starbucks and Qantas unveil plans to retrench staff, it appears March was the high point for employment in NSW. Since then, the number of jobs has steadily declined and the jobless rate has gone up half a percentage point to 4.7 per cent - the highest in the country.

An economist at Macquarie Bank, Brian Redican, said NSW was the "canary in the coalmine" and predicted the national jobless rate would rise above 5 per cent next year.

NSW's heavily indebted households had been hardest hit by the rise in mortgage repayments and petrol prices, Mr Redican said. Jobs were particularly at risk in the retail, property and finance sectors.

"I think that the weakness in the housing market in the south-west of Sydney has now encompassed the rest of Sydney, even in the northern and eastern suburbs," he said.

But with oil prices falling and a probable cut to official interest rates next month, it was unlikely the economy was heading for recession: "We don't think the canary's going to snuff it this time, it's just going to have a very bad cough," Mr Redican said.

But further job losses are seen as inevitable.

An economist at the Commonwealth Bank, Michael Workman, said clients in the retail sector were already laying off staff because of the spending slowdown. "Large national companies are saying to us that they've actually started to put some people off, but were reluctant to do it and would prefer to reduce their hours."

Any reduction in hours would not be picked up in the Bureau of Statistics' monthly jobs survey, because it counts people who work one hour a week as employed.

A fall in retail and service-sector positions is a likely cause of the plunge in part-time jobs of 42,800 last month. This was offset by a rise in full-time jobs of 53,700.

But the bureau was forced to slash the sample size of its job survey by a quarter in the month because of budgetary constraints. It has warned of increasing volatility in jobs numbers.