Page 2623 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 October 1992
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them again now; but if - as the Chief Minister claims - all of this that she claims to be doing is generating jobs, how is it that there are so many people still unemployed? One would think that they would all disappear if the initiatives that she claims were really having any effect.
Madam Speaker, what we need is some short-term initiatives, not initiatives that are going to pay off in five or 10 years' time. They are fine and they will have their effect, but we need some short-term initiatives that create jobs now. Today's unemployed are not interested in jobs that are likely to eventuate in five years' time. Madam Speaker, the EPACT report, her own advisory committee's report, listed a whole range of things that she should be doing. I suggest that she start doing them now. I call on them to listen to their own advisory sources and to get together a strategy that can deal with this problem, and to stop talking about it as though it does not exist.
MS SZUTY (3.46): Madam Speaker, the topic of the matter of public importance discussion before us today is the unemployment crisis in general terms. A large part of that is adult joblessness which, according to the figures issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, is rising despite the fact that the employment participation rate is increasing, according to those same figures.
However, by far the most alarming aspect of the unemployment figures is the estimation of the level of youth unemployment, which Mr De Domenico has referred to this afternoon. The Government has been on notice since the 15 February election that reducing youth unemployment was a high priority for Canberrans. However, to date, we have had no quantifiable model of the problem, nor the solution. In the past, in this Assembly, I have unsuccessfully asked for the issue of youth unemployment to be considered for a select committee inquiry, or that the Social Policy Committee be asked to take on, as a term of reference, a detailed investigation of youth unemployment and possible job creation measures. But what I feel is a difficult task, which would benefit from maximum input, has apparently been seen as just too hard by both the Liberal and Labor parties, who seem unwilling to work together to resolve this issue.
The Chief Minister has said often, and continues to say often, in public, that the Government is addressing the problem. However, in five months the youth unemployment rate in the ACT has risen from 25 per cent in April to 56 per cent in September. While I recognise the volatility of the figures, this in itself is a major concern. Since acknowledging that the unemployment figures for Canberra are unreliable, because of the smallness of the sample, the ACT Government appears to have done nothing to ascertain the extent of the real unemployment problem among Canberra's young people. Thankfully, at least the Australian Bureau of Statistics has agreed to increase the sample size used for Canberra's statistics gathering, but this move will take a further period to assess.
Madam Speaker, I wonder what the Chief Minister's Youth Affairs Section feels about this lack of a quantifiable problem. In some respects it must make it easier for the Government to ignore the youth unemployment problem and to hope that it will go away until the next ABS survey. Canberrans have no reason to believe that our population of young people is experiencing any fewer problems getting jobs than their counterparts interstate. But what has resulted from all this publicly expressed concern? A few jobs have been created, as reflected in the
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