ABSTRACT

Since coming to power in 1983 the Australian Labor Government, under the prime ministership of Bob Hawke, has struggled to produce a comprehensive and coherent set of youth policies to which the Government could be genuinely committed. Young people, faced with unemployment, training, or part-time work, after eleven or twelve years in education, are creating new cultural responses that reflect the considerable change and crisis undergone by the Australian economy over the last three years. ‘Priority One’ was an attempt to introduce a range of policies—education, training and social security—to help young Australians. The fact that the greater number of panel appearances are from young people at school is little comfort when people consider the state of absenteeism still in schools, and the statistical connection between absenteeism and crime. Young unemployed women were more susceptible to working in the cash economy than young men, being driven to accept both illegal conditions and illegal work.