Page 536 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 1993
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The Government established the women's employment strategy grants as a formal grants program from 1992 to 1993. This means that the Government is now able to offer grants totalling $60,000 per year for work in relation to women's employment, education and training, in addition to the priority given to women under the employment and training grants program.
This outline which I have provided now to the house is not exhaustive. It provides only a small cross-section of the programs and initiatives which the Government has put in place to tackle the problem of unemployment. As I said last week in outlining the Government's priorities for 1993, the Territory is only a small player in the macro-economic life of the nation, but we will continue to give our highest priority to tackling unemployment in the ACT.
MR DE DOMENICO (3.38): Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I am going to try to get the perspective back to the ACT with some facts and figures. The Chief Minister, quite correctly says that yes, the percentage of unemployment from one time to the next has gone down from 8.4 to 7.9.
Ms Follett: It is 7.8.
MR DE DOMENICO: It is 7.8; I am sorry. I did not hear her say, though, that that reflects more people out of work now than there were last year. That is also a fact. Notwithstanding what statistics tell you, let us have a look at the people that are affected, the actual people that are unemployed. There are close to 13,000 people in the ACT at the minute who are unemployed, and what has the Government done about trying to make that figure a heck of a lot less than it is?
The Chief Minister quite nicely puts it that we have a casino. That is a fantastic initiative that, by the way, was started a long time ago; but congratulations, Chief Minister. The Chief Minister says that her Government supports the international air freight terminal. Well done! Good support! Wonderful! She has established a tourism development unit. The Chief Minister, though, does not talk about the tourism area. She does not say, for example, that the chairman, Mr Ron Brown, has recently resigned from the Tourism Commission. She also does not say that there have been some vacancies on that Tourism Commission which she has not made appointments to yet, but she has talked about tourism.
She talks about working with business. She has mentioned that she has established five committees and they are doing a wonderful job and looking into the problem. They all have mirrors and they are looking into things. Her own EPACT committee which made a report to her on youth unemployment in 1992 - I think the month was May 1992 - made certain recommendations. We know that some of these recommendations are in the too-hard basket, like the deregulation of the labour market and the deregulation of trading hours. They are direct recommendations from the Chief Minister's own Economic Priorities Advisory Committee; yet, what has the Government done since those recommendations were made? The answer is: Nothing. The Chief Minister has stood up here time and time again and, quite nicely and smilingly, has given some wonderful motherhood statements. She is concerned about unemployment; she is concerned about the unemployed; she is concerned about social justice. Where is the social justice in nearly 13,000 Canberrans being unemployed? Where is the social justice when the ACT has the highest - I repeat, the highest - level of youth unemployment in this country?
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