Page 2019 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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Economy
MR STEFANIAK: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, how is the local economy performing during the current national recession?
MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, that is a very good follow-up question to the last one. I know that the Opposition will not want to hear this because, in fact, our economy is functioning much better than anybody else's, and it is interesting to hear some of the facts.
Members interjected.
MR KAINE: I said that they would not want to hear this. They want to talk through this and they want to obscure it; but facts are facts, Mr Speaker, and you cannot argue with facts. There is no doubt that - - -
Mr Berry: What about youth unemployment? Tell us about that.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Berry!
MR KAINE: I will get to unemployment in a minute.
Mr Moore: Youth unemployment.
MR KAINE: I will get to youth unemployment too, because, unlike some other people in this Assembly, I have no reason to obscure the facts. You might like to twist them and distort them and misrepresent them, as you so often do; but I have no intention of doing that. The fact is that - and the members in opposition know this as well as everybody else does, and that is one of the reasons why they are in opposition; they could not confront the facts when they were in government - the Australian economy is depressed. It is not the ACT in isolation. We are not an island separated from the rest of Australia.
Mr Berry: I do not think that is the reason.
MR KAINE: Mr Berry does not want to hear this. To him, it is another big joke. Hospitals are a joke; the economy is a joke. The only joke in this place is Mr Berry, and he sits in opposition because he was one and he remains one.
Despite the fact that we have a national economic crisis, the ACT is doing very well. We have experienced employment growth of 5,800 jobs over the last year. In every State and in the Northern Territory, but not in the ACT, there has been a decline in the number of jobs. The unemployment rate in the ACT is 6.6 per cent, and it is still considerably lower than the national rate of 9.9 per cent.
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