Cut dole to under-30s: Abbott

Australia Opposition leader Tony Abbott. Photo / Getty Images

SYDNEY - It's a radical idea, and one unlikely to go down well with the young New Zealanders who flock to well-paid jobs in West Australian mines.

The Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, is considering banning the dole for Australians under 30, in the hope they will fill vacancies in the booming resources industry.

Abbott told mining industry executives this week the scheme would take pressure off the welfare system, and reduce demand for skilled migrants.

But the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, dismissed it as "policy making on the run".

The idea was raised in Perth on Monday with about 15 industry leaders.

Abbott told ABC radio yesterday: "I had a very free-ranging discussion with people who were complaining bitterly about the difficulty of getting people to work. And we were canvassing about whether changes to the social security system might help to create more incentives to work."

He said the proposal was not yet official Coalition policy, but added: "If there are jobs available, they shouldn't be on the dole. It's as simple as that."

Thousands of overseas workers, including New Zealanders, have found work in the mining industry in Western Australia and Queensland in recent years.

With the sector booming again, the Minerals Council of Australia says that if Australia wants to maintain its share of global markets, the number of workers will have to grow by about 86,000 over the next decade.

Abbott wants more of those jobs to be filled by able-bodied Australians, and he raised the possibility of a Coalition government funding skills training for the unemployed.

However, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Paul Howes, said the idea was "stupid" and "crass politics at its worst".

He told Sky News: "It's the type of thing we did hear from Pauline Hanson. I think it's one of Tony Abbott's Sarah Palin moments.

"You can't just pluck any old Joe out of an area of chronic unemployment, dump them in a mine and think that that somehow is going to solve the skills shortage. If he genuinely thinks you are going to solve an economically crippling skills shortage by taking punitive measures against welfare recipients, he has clearly never lived in the real world."

Demand for workers is expected to be particularly intense in the coming years in Western Australia, where a number of massive resources projects are scheduled to begin, including a A$43 billion ($56 billion) liquefied natural gas development on Barrow Island, off the Pilbara coast, and a planned expansion of Woodside Petroleum's Pluto gas plant, near Karratha.

Of the 86,000 new workers projected to be needed nationally, 31,000 of them will be skilled tradespeople.

Abbott was criticised by colleagues last month when he announced a proposal to give parents six months' leave on full pay of up to A$150,000 a year, without consulting them.