Page 2622 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 October 1992
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Members interjected.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order!
MR KAINE: Madam Speaker, I will continue to shout over the top of Mr Lamont. He is the one who complained a little while ago about people cutting across his debate. Madam Speaker, these figures that we have been talking about do not take into account the additional people in the 15 to 19 age group who, over the next six months, are going to come into the work force and will be looking for both part-time and full-time work. So, if it is 56 per cent now, what on earth is it going to be like by next February?
The picture here, Madam Speaker, simply is not one of improvement or growth; yet we hear the Chief Minister talking about our great economy and the fact that it is accelerating. If ever the word "rubbish" was appropriate, that is it. It is a picture of continuing despair and social dislocation about which this Government, despite its rhetoric, is doing nothing. The parlous state of the economy and the long-term damage that unemployment represents to our community's future is hardly a secret. Even the Labor Party recognised the importance of unemployment as an issue in their election platform, but at that time they only promised to create 100 training and work experience places for six months and to create 250 Jobskills places. The Chief Minister's budget strategy statement in May again recognised that unemployment was a major issue and that the recession still lingered, but offered no significant solutions. Where was there a single solution in her budget strategy? There was hardly a reference to it. In fact, neither did her recent budget refer to it, and we will come to that.
Unemployment in the ACT obviously warranted more detailed attention in May than it was given, but there was no sense of crisis or even a sense of urgency on the part of the Chief Minister in May. She was happy to say, and she now makes light of it, that teenage unemployment had fallen to 11.7 per cent, and that was good. Now, when it is 56 per cent, she wants to shrug it off and say that they are only statistics. While the Government was claiming to be committed to giving priority to youth training and employment, job creation opportunities were limited by financial constraints. This was in May, and of course it is reflected in the budget. The Chief Minister apparently still had not become aware, from the dark recesses of her impregnable bunker, that there was in any way a crisis or any sense of urgency. How the obvious could be so easily missed by somebody so open to the community, so consultative, so well informed, and so sensitive to the plight of the common person is absolutely beyond comprehension. The signs were plain enough to see.
Labor Party policy and her own speeches dealt, however fleetingly and inadequately, with the problem. Even her own Economic Priorities Advisory Committee made it plain and said that youth unemployed are at risk of joining a core group of long-term unemployed; hence, they deserve special treatment. In her budget the Chief Minister did not reflect any changed attitude to resolving or addressing the unemployment crisis. There was still no sense of urgency. She merely increased expenditure on the training and short-term temporary work experience schemes announced in May, and which she still talks about as though they are producing jobs. Well, they are not. The Chief Minister has gone through all the initiatives that she claims are producing jobs and I will not traverse
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