Page 3806 - Week 14 - Thursday, 10 December 1992
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Madam Speaker, nevertheless, the Government has been aware of the problem and we have taken steps to address it. We are pursuing youth unemployment as a serious issue. We have established a number of initiatives aimed particularly at this segment of the work force. We have established a work force development scheme that will provide employment for some 30 young people in the ACT, and we have also provided an additional 10 places for ACT youth under the Australian traineeship scheme.
Members will recall also that in the budget context I announced the creation of an ACT Youth Conservation Corps. That will provide 40 places this year and 80 places in a full year for young unemployed people. It will provide them with workplace experience and training that will fit them for further work. We have also, as an internal administrative measure, curtailed the external recruitment in the ACT Government Service of the ASO3 to ASO6 range. That has been done as a deliberate initiative to increase opportunities for young people at the ASO1 to ASO3 levels. We have deliberately altered the recruitment practices within our own service to give younger people a better opportunity to join the ACT Government Service.
We have put aside $120,000 of additional funding for the employment and training grants program. That funding goes to community organisations. The community organisations, in turn, provide employment and training opportunities for the most disadvantaged in the labour market, and, of course, the most disadvantaged quite clearly includes young people. We have also in the budget put an additional $50,000 into the new enterprise incentive scheme, which provides self-employment opportunities, again aimed at the most disadvantaged in the labour market, and again that includes young people.
Other community organisations which have been given additional funding to assist with employment initiatives include Jobline, for which we have provided an additional $70,000, and Involve, which has received an additional $46,000. Both of those grants are aimed specifically at assisting young people into short-term employment. Madam Speaker, we have also provided funding for a full-time program coordinator for the tradeswomen on the move program. We have done that in a deliberate attempt to expand the career opportunities for young women in the ACT as they move into the labour market.
Those specific initiatives for young people, Madam Speaker, have to be put beside the Government's expanded capital works program, our support for some private sector developments, including, for instance, tourism and the casino, and a range of other private sector initiatives, all of which improve the labour market generally. I think that those initiatives will, over time, see a reduction in the youth unemployment situation. I do regard it as a serious situation, and one which the Government will continue to address.
What Mr Humphries has not mentioned, of course, is that in respect of our general unemployment situation the ACT figure has again dropped this month to 6.3 per cent. That is the second month of reduction in general unemployment. It is also the fifth month in a row of considerable growth in employment, and I think that is very significant because growth in employment expands the whole of our labour market. Of course, a general improvement in our labour market and in our economy, a continued recovery from the recession, is probably what will prove to be of the greatest benefit to all of our unemployed people, including young people.
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