Page 539 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 1993
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Mr Westende and Mrs Carnell and others that have been in business will tell you that the greatest burden preventing people from employing more people is the cost of labour in terms of payroll tax, workers compensation, occupational health and safety, training guarantee levies, superannuation guarantee levies and the tonnes and tonnes of paperwork that small business in particular has to do in order to comply with the regulations. This Government has done nothing about the unemployment situation. This Government waxes lyrical, smiles and says all the right things; but it sits on its hands. Ms Follett is to be blamed for that. She says a lot of nice things. She and her Government do nothing.
MS SZUTY (3.48): Madam Speaker, the debate today led by Mr Cornwell has addressed the fact that the issue of unemployment - and, in particular, I wish to speak about youth unemployment - has been receiving soft treatment since the election that brought this Second Assembly into being. The Government's response to the problem has been to create a limited number of training places, to write polite letters to businesses pointing out what training assistance is available and to commission EPACT to prepare a paper which to date has had little impact on the growing problem of unemployment among our young people in the ACT.
The problem is not new. In 1987 the Federal Joint Committee on the Australian Capital Territory gave an historical context for our high youth unemployment rate. It said:
The high level of youth unemployment is a product of lack of experience and skills. It is also influenced by Canberra's industrial structure which requires high skill levels ... Recruitment levels changed greatly from the 1970s to the 1980s with a marked drop in public service vacancies for young school leavers as a result of changed public sector employment practices. The traineeship scheme will have an impact on the recruitment of young people into the public service and the Government traineeship policy is a response to the increase in youth unemployment and should provide better employment opportunities.
I think we all realise that the traineeship road has not taken up as many unemployed young people as have been denied access to employment by the recession. I acknowledge that other packages have been put together to try to stem the increasing numbers of young people without jobs. More traineeships, more training courses and the environmental corps proposed by the Chief Minister, modelled on the South Australian experience, have all attempted to prevent young people from having their expectations of employment diminished, but more needs to be done, and done soon.
Mr Bill Kelty and Mr Lindsay Fox recently joined forces to promote one particular method of encouraging business to employ young people. Their work for Australia campaign has so far received pledges of 27,000 jobs for young people. Mr Fox admits that the bottom line, that is, the number of young people who are actually in some of those promised jobs, is 909, but they continue to be optimistic that the jobs will come. The pair address meetings and have local community members and local employers form committees in Melbourne, country Victoria, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
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