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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (16 April) . . Page.. 946 ..

Mr De Domenico: What figures?

MR BERRY: The ABS figures, the labour force figures. Get your own. The civil population has grown over the period from January 1995 from 229,000 to 231,000, and the unemployment rate has grown faster than the population.

Mr De Domenico: Give us the employment rate.

MR BERRY: It does not matter what figures you use. Unemployment is 13,200. The population has grown, but the percentage keeps growing. We now have 7.8 per cent of the population in the ACT unemployed because of Mrs Carnell's action. Mrs Carnell is chasing the national figure. She is trying to get us up there. She thinks it is great to be up there with the rest. Mr Speaker, I would rather be down at the bottom, thank you very much. That is where we were in the final period of the Follett Government, but Mrs Carnell is dragging us up to the top again. No matter how you describe it, the percentage rate is higher. Our youth unemployment rate is a disgrace; it has been climbing month after month. Mrs Carnell wrongly said in question time that it was 40 per cent for every month of the Follett Government. That was completely untrue. It is now 40.7 per cent. It has been over 40 per cent for the last five months - a national disgrace.

That is the crisis we have here in the ACT. We have a leader who has created a crisis of confidence in the business sector, and it has been mostly because of her attacks on the public sector. Every businessman out there knows that if you cut the public sector in the ACT, or threaten to cut the public sector in the ACT, people stop spending. Who are the first people who are hurt? Small business people, the people these Liberals opposite dare to claim they represent. They do not represent small business people. In fact, they are the enemies of small business people in the ACT. Their attacks on the public sector create this crisis of confidence because people just stop spending each time confidence falls. Plumbers are finding it harder to get work, electricians are finding it harder to get work, small shopkeepers are finding it harder to get people through their doors. People are not spending because they are concerned about what John Howard is going to do to their jobs, about the effect John Howard's attacks on the Public Service will have on the private sector, if they happen to be employed there. They are concerned about the future of their businesses. Let us not hear this claptrap from those opposite that they are the friends of small business. They are the enemies of small business. They have created the crisis, and small business people out there know it. I have had them talking to me about the problems you are creating and the lack of confidence that has occurred because of your steerage of the ACT economy.

Let us look at the ACT economy for a moment. Later on this afternoon we will be looking at a new Bill begging for more money from the Assembly, begging for permission to shift money around in the budget. This is the same Mrs Carnell who made so many promises before the last election. Small business now knows that somehow they are going to have to pay the extra $14m for health, and they know that it is going to cost jobs. It is going to come out of another area of expenditure, probably capital works, so the crisis - - -

MR SPEAKER: Do not pre-empt debate, Mr Berry.

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