Page 763 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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Madam Speaker, the fact of life is that this Territory has been divided into two communities, haves and have-nots - people with very good incomes, people with very good jobs, people with security, and those with nothing to look forward to but a career on the dole queue. We have to be working hard to reduce and to destroy that culture, and we have not seen the evidence from this Government, I regret to say, that they have any idea of how to go about that task.
MS SZUTY (3.55): Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to reflect somewhat on what I feel are the national values of Australia and the yardsticks by which we measure those values. In relation to the Federal election of 13 March, 56 per cent of the electorate stated in a Morgan poll that unemployment was the major issue of the election. People were concerned at the high level of unemployment, which has grown steadily, and if voters had any qualms about voting for the Australian Labor Party this was the issue that was at the heart of most of those concerns. It appears that voters felt that they would not do any better with a change of government and that they were less than sure about the positive effects of the changes proposed by the Liberal Party. That is my summation of the 13 March poll and, although I am not claiming to be a political analyst, that is possibly a plus, given the general consensus before the election that the result would be a landslide for the Liberals.
Why, then, is the issue of unemployment so important to Australians? In the early 1980s when there was 10 per cent unemployment nationally much was made of the fact that 90 per cent of the work force was still employed. But people did not respond to this alternative portrayal of the facts. Ten per cent of the work force being unemployed still sets alarm bells ringing as no other economic indicator can. The reasons are complex. Unemployment touches individuals in a way that talk of current account deficits, consumer price indexes and other figures released on a regular basis cannot, because the issue is about people - people like ourselves, people with and without families, people who are unskilled or highly ranked professionals - and unemployment has the potential to destroy dreams, hopes and aspirations.
I would like to quote from a recent Federal Government EPAC background paper which estimated, based on 1991-92 unemployment rates, that unemployment costs Australia $23 billion per year. The authors, from the ANU's public policy program, expressed it in different terms - that is, that unemployment is costing Australia approximately 5 to 6 per cent of gross domestic product per year. They make the following statement at the end of their report's abstract:
In our view the Government should not sacrifice thousands of unemployed people to appease "the gods of inflation".
I feel that most Australians would accept this as a fairly important premise, particularly as most people understand personal hardship caused by retrenchment but are less sure on why very low inflation is beneficial, or what the current account deficit means to them, other than feeling morally compelled to buy the more expensive brands of food products because they are made in Australia. The authors also enlarge on other social costs of unemployment.
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