Page 2612 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 October 1992
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Madam Speaker, the Government is committed to job creation in this Territory, it seems, by providing training and various schemes of one kind or another. Both methods, I am suggesting, have been discredited from time to time, and in fact have been discredited most of the time, for not providing real employment. Just to vouch for that, Mr Barry Lowe, writing in the Canberra Times and having had a good look at all training schemes and so forth over the years, has had a lot to say about them. He wrote:
They may persuade the electorate that the Government cares about the unemployed but in economic terms they represent a poor return from a very substantial outlay.
He mentions the very infamous YES scheme of the Whitlam Government, and others, costing $92.5m and returning very little in terms of full-time jobs. Another gentleman has been involved in assessing all these training schemes, and so on. A Mr Mograby did a PhD thesis on it. He had a look at all the schemes. We had the NEAT scheme, the RED scheme and the WPP scheme, under both Mr Whitlam and Mr Fraser, I might say; not just under Labor governments, but also under former Liberal governments. The bottom line is that there was a lot of waste. Not many jobs were created that lasted long term. Programs like this, Madam Speaker, are obviously quick-fire solutions that get people off the dole queue for a little while, and off the unemployment list; but they do not create real jobs.
Direct job creation schemes are fundamentally remedial measures to address a serious economic, social and, obviously, political problem; but they do very little in creating real, long-term jobs for our young people. They do not address structural factors in the labour market which have created the shortage of jobs, and the existence of a marginalised group of long-term unemployed workers. Madam Speaker, what I am saying is that it is not good enough just to sit here and say, "Listen, we have had all sorts of job creation and training schemes, but not one real job has been created in the ACT". The fact that we have such a high level of youth - - -
Ms Follett: Rubbish!
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, the Chief Minister says "Rubbish". The figures speak for themselves. The ACT has the highest youth unemployment level in this country, and you have done nothing about it. You sit there and you say "Rubbish". It is about time you started doing something, instead of mouthing platitudes. Madam Speaker, real job creation is about building a healthy economy. There is no doubt about that.
Let us have a look at the other thing. Look at the Canberra Times, which says that for the first time in a very long time even retail figures in the ACT show a minus figure. For the first time in a very long time even the retail sector of this Territory has a figure of minus 0.1 per cent. We are one of the States and Territories in this country once again showing a negative growth in the retail industry. For the Chief Minister to sit here and say "Rubbish" to me is beyond comprehension. The figures, as I have said, Madam Speaker - - -
Mr Lamont: Most things are beyond your comprehension.
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