Page 1269 - Week 05 - Thursday, 25 June 1992
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Indeed, the establishment of a select committee achieves this objective. The Chief Minister also said:
Members will recall ... that the matter of youth unemployment was referred to the Standing Committee on Social Policy. Accordingly, I have referred the report to that committee's presiding member.
In fact, the Chief Minister almost seems to suggest in her speech that the Social Policy Committee take on a formal reference on youth unemployment. If that is her wish and/or her intent, the Chief Minister should formally propose that the Social Policy Committee do just that. Appropriately, it can draw together the views of unions, government, business and the wider community, as the EPACT report suggests.
The Prime Minister has announced that a youth summit will be held in Canberra in early July. Since then we have seen the emergence of a youth forum to be hosted by the Federal Opposition. There are two parallel strategies to address Australia's most pressing social issue - youth unemployment. We have the opportunity in this Assembly to do better than that, to establish a select committee that will draw together the full range of views on this issue by working cooperatively.
MS ELLIS (11.18), in reply: I rise to conclude this debate with some comments. I do not want to allow an impression to be created in this Assembly that the Social Policy Committee chose to ignore or not recognise the severity of youth unemployment in the ACT. This is not the case. The committee, in recognising the problem, believes the issue to be an economically-driven one, primarily to be economically addressed, far more that an issue to be solved - I emphasise that - by any Social Policy Committee.
The Economic Priorities Advisory Committee of the ACT was established by the Chief Minister to provide broad-based independent advice to the Government on the formulation of economic, industry and employment policies. As advised by the Chief Minister, the first report requested of EPACT was on the ACT youth labour market. Whilst we see other governments around Australia creating summits and talkfests, as some of my colleagues refer to them, on youth unemployment, this Government has already taken action and now has a valuable and well-documented study which is being examined as a matter of urgency by others, including the Ministers of this Government.
Whilst acknowledging the urgency of the youth unemployment question, the EPACT report states that there are clearly other groups of an equal or even higher labour market priority. It states:
Whilst these groups are not considered extensively in the report, they include women re-entering the workforce, people with a disability, people from a non-English speaking background, older workers, predominantly males, made redundant, sole parents and Aboriginal people.
The unemployment question needs a broad and holistic approach. Whilst EPACT identifies a number of specific issues relating to youth that need to be tackled, the general conclusion is that the best approach to reducing youth unemployment is to promote overall job growth. This the Government fully supports.
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