Page 272 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 May 1992
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So, to go back to my more pragmatic approach, let us talk about it from the point of view of a business proprietor in the ACT; and there are many thousands of those in the ACT today. We have, probably, substantially fewer small businesses than we did a couple of years ago; but, even so, if just half of those businesses employed one extra young person - or one extra person at all - youth unemployment and, for that matter, unemployment totally, would be virtually eradicated. We are talking about private enterprise, even in the ACT. How do we actually encourage those businesses to put on this extra person - not down the track somewhere, not next month, not next year, not when the committee brings down its report; but now, when these young people need a job?
Mr Kaine: They do not want to hear how you encourage the unemployed people. That is beyond their comprehension.
MRS CARNELL: Obviously they do not. The first thing that we must do is remove some of the tax imposts on business. The most insidious of these taxes is payroll tax. Let us just look at this thing more pragmatically. Payroll tax, for better or for worse, is a tax on employment. You pay more if you employ more people; it is quite simple.
Let us look at this in another perspective. Let us look at governments that have the guts to make really hard decisions. Let us look at Queensland, in the past, when they decided to abolish death duties. It is, I suppose, a bit of a leap in the argument to talk about retired people in a debate about youth, but I think it is relevant because it shows how the abolition of a particular tax can really generate social changes. When Queensland abolished death duties there was an almost instant migration of retired people from all other parts of Australia to Queensland. And that is the basis of the economic boom that currently is Queensland. That was the basis of the turnaround for Queensland. If we, as an Assembly, had the guts to do something about payroll tax in the ACT, we could generate a beneficial change of similar proportions for our young people and for the business we talk so much about and do so little about in the ACT. We are talking about vision and we are talking about guts, and we are talking about a government with very little of both.
The second and equally important initiative is to make youth wages and conditions more flexible, and to address the area of penalty rates. From there we can easily move to a deregulation of trading hours; we can move to a situation where tourism is a real growth area for the ACT, where tourists stay longer because there is something to do after 5 o'clock at night, where businesses can employ people after 6 o'clock at night, where you can stay open on Saturdays and Sundays - not because Mr Berry says that we have to, but because it is economically viable to do so. From there we can create real and sustainable job opportunities for young people in our retail and hospitality industries. If we hold our breath waiting for government to provide jobs for our young people, we will suffocate.
To sum all of those things up - now we are talking about creating jobs next week; we are talking about now; we are not talking about down the track - let us, as an Assembly, have the guts to reduce payroll tax as a first step, possibly by increasing the threshold to $1m, therefore allowing business growth, attracting business to the ACT, and creating immediate jobs for our young people. Let us make youth wages and conditions more flexible, and let us abolish penalty rates. Let us not stuff around. Then let us deregulate trading hours.
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