Page 762 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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We all know that it is much more complex than that. The fact of life is that our horse is pretty sick and does not want to drink very much because the incentives to drink are not there. The real need is for incentives for actual employment growth, actual creation of jobs in the private sector in particular. That is what the ACT needs to be looking at. We need to be stimulating the markets that create employment growth and reducing business costs.
Mr Berry: How? Come on. Spend more?
MR HUMPHRIES: All right. We have a question from Mr Berry. A plaintive look crosses his face. How do we do it? I think we can follow the advice of our Prime Minister. Our Prime Minister offered advice to us a few years ago about the way to stimulate job growth and create jobs. He said a few years ago, in 1985 to be precise, that payroll tax was a major disincentive to employment in this community, and he talked about Australia in that context. We have to take off payroll tax and other taxes which affect the way in which businesses do their job and create, therefore, the opportunities for businesses to expand. That is the reality of the matter. Mr Keating, in 1985, did not specify how he was going to create the money that you would need to take off payroll tax. I assume that Mr Berry did not ask him at the time. I do know that there has to be a plan established to do that. That is what we need to be doing - looking at ways in which we can stimulate those markets and reduce business costs, because the picture is pretty sorry indeed.
Unemployment was up in the ACT to 8.8 per cent as of two weeks ago. That is up one full percentage point in one month alone, from January. That means that there are 15,100 people in Canberra looking for full-time or part-time work, not counting those people who have simply given up on the task of finding a job. Youth unemployment was even more alarming. It was 45.2 per cent, up 6 per cent in one month from 39.2 per cent in January. Two-and-a-half thousand young people in the 15- to 19-year age group in the ACT were looking for work in the ACT.
The Chief Minister made the point, and it was a good point, that those figures are not seasonally adjusted and that some of those people will be soaked up in the training and education sectors in the next month or so. That comment is partly true but it is substantially also not true because, as we well know, the employment and training sectors are absolutely and totally saturated at present. There is almost no room for expansion in those sectors. There are very few new opportunities coming along in those sectors. We already have far too many people going back and repeating year 12 in our secondary colleges simply because they do not have the necessary capacity to obtain employment in the private sector or, indeed, outside of the work force.
Mr Wood: Fewer this year than last year.
MR HUMPHRIES: As I said, many of them are just giving up, Minister, and that is a real concern. The Chief Minister says that we are doing all right; that we are about the same as we were 12 months ago. Well, 12 months ago, in March 1992, youth unemployment in the ACT stood at 19.7 per cent. If the Chief Minister is predicting a more than halving of youth unemployment in the space of the next two weeks - that is what we are talking about - then we will all be very happy. I think we will carry her out of this chamber on our shoulders, with acclamation. But I think we know that it is not going to happen.
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