Page 636 - Week 02 - Thursday, 21 February 1991
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MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Berry. Chief Minister, please resume.
MR KAINE: I repeat, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that in January 1991 the overall unemployment rate in the ACT was lower than that of any other State or Territory. For the ACT it was 8.1 per cent, compared to over 10 per cent for South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. The latest figures show that employment in the ACT grew by 3,700 in the year to January compared to a decline nationally. If the Leader of the Opposition was being frank and not seeking to score some cheap political points - and she is right; I am going to say it because that is what it was all about - she would acknowledge that the unemployment rates that she is seeking to highlight are seasonal. They are always high in January and February and, if she had stayed in government long enough, she would have found that they would have been high in January last year when she was Chief Minister; but, of course, she did not stay around long enough, and deservedly so.
I will make a couple of points in respect of the efforts of this Government to reduce youth unemployment and unemployment generally. Firstly, there are not any quick fixes to this problem. If there were, Mr Keating and Mr Hawke and their crew would have fixed it a long time ago; but there are none. Job creation programs of the past, such as the RED scheme, the community employment program and the community youth support scheme did not work, and will never work, and that is why they were abandoned. They are not a solution.
The Leader of the Opposition appears to be suggesting that this Government should reduce youth unemployment by creating bogus make-work schemes. These schemes do not work; they will not work. All they do is distort the figures and obscure unemployment, and the unemployed are subsidised in a different way. (Quorum formed)
Mr Speaker, I said that there were no quick fixes to the problem; nor are there. Bogus make-work schemes will not do it. Secondly, this Government has focused on creating the right environment for the growth and diversification of the local economy. Faced with the static, if not declining, presence of the Federal Government in Canberra, we have charted a course of economic development to create sustainable job growth in the private sector. The Government is committed to creating a better commercial environment, in which businesses can operate and develop the necessary competitive edge needed to win new markets and diversify their operations, thereby addressing some of the fundamental causes of the unemployment problem - something that our colleagues on the hill over there cannot manage to do.
We are also addressing the problem through training, as implemented through TAFE, the apprenticeship scheme and our assistance in Skillshare and the industry training
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