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Comment: Where Are Our Priorities? (by Luke Bo'sher)

Luke Bo’sher is the President of Footprints Forever Inc., and youth advisor to a range of organizations and governmental committees in areas such as Access and Equity, Welfare and Youth Consultation. An interesting discussion was started by Mr. Bo'sher on the tokenistic nature of youth representation in the Australian Government’s consultative methods for young people when he posted a view on YARN and Youthgas, two youth discussion groups, as printed below.

I have just returned from an interview with The Honorable Larry Anthony, Federal Minister for Youth and Youth Affairs, run by Talkback Classroom supported by the Parliamentary Education Office and the National Museum of Australia.

One issue that touched my heart was the National Youth Round Table (NYRT). The Federal Government is spending just a little under $500,000 on the NYRT, which has been working now for four years and brings fifty young people together each year from across Australia. The program allows the youth involved to research a specific topic and create a project from that research. From this, there have been eight successful recommendations in the last four years – only eight - of which only three have a direct relevance to the Federal Government.

This year marks the increase of around 230% in the Promotions/Marketing budget for the NYRT since 2000 - up from $54,076 to $125,842. This increase has been in proportion to an overall increase of around $50,000 in funding since the beginning of the project. With only eight successful outcomes, it seems that the government is either advertising a project that isn't being as successful as it could or should be, or it is taking money from successful recommendations to spend it on promoting a project while depleting its resources. At the same time, quite ironically, the number of young people applying to be involved in the program has dropped from 1021 young people in 2000 to just 651 in 2004. This suggests that the Promotions/Marketing are not targeting these young people effectively.

The trend of expensive marketing is also evident in the National Youth Week program, where funding for "Marketing and Sponsorship" was $340,700 and then another $55,000 in “Promotional Material" - a total of 58% of the National Youth Week budget! Similarly, The National Indigenous Youth Leadership Group has had a funding increase of 500% in "Publicity, Promotion, Photography & Filming" from 2001 and 2002 to 2003 while the overall budget has dropped by $10,000. Like the NYRT, the number of applicants for the Group of 15 members dropped from 72 to 41 between 2001 and 2002 to 2003).

The NYRT’s purpose is, in the Federal Government’s eyes, “to create a direct dialogue with young Australians and to ensure that their views are taken into account in the policy-making processes”, and yet there were only six young people from Victoria, 12 from Queensland District, and every one of the people from Melbourne lives within 40 kilometers of the Central Business District. How can it, in any way, represent the young people living in regional and rural areas around areas like Victoria?

I believe the increase in spending on Promotions/Marketing is a disgrace. This money should be spent on making effectual change for young people. This is an important issue that the media seems ignorant of, as the aired version of the interview with Larry Anthony had this discussion of over-spending on publicity and unrepresentative members cut from the version that went to air.

This is an issue the Australian Youth Organizations sector and all Australians, young and not so young, should be concerned with. But in light of no Federally funded or recognized peak body to deal with these issues, it is one which is being be glossed over by the Government.

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