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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3481 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Finally, I turn to the claim that this is a jobs budget. Other members have spoken of this but the Greens are also very concerned about the nature of the figures. We are glad that the Government believes that unemployment is a serious enough issue to require action. This Government's answer is found in their publication Jobs for Canberra. While there are a couple of interesting initiatives in this document, on the whole it is a rehash of existing schemes and full of fairly dubious assumptions. For example, how are 800 to 1,000 jobs going to be stimulated through Kick Start when there is such a slump in the housing market? Apparently, this figure came from industry, and industry itself is not really prepared to state that it is a particularly firm figure. Neither the Government nor the Housing Industry Association, which was the proponent of the scheme, has made any assessment of the demand for the Kick Start scheme. These figures are based on thin air.

Despite the emphasis on job creation in the budget, the employment forecasts are pretty grim, with job growth predicted to fall 1.5 per cent in this financial year, and the three-year planning assumptions are for zero employment growth. It would be very interesting to compare the job creation and training schemes that exist now with what was in place in Canberra 12 months ago. Thanks to the Liberal Government's Federal colleagues, labour market programs have been decimated. LEAP, Jobskills and New Work Opportunities places will all go as of the end of this year. In the last ACT budget labour market programs were also cut by more than half. I remember that in the debate then this Government was saying that that is a Commonwealth responsibility. We argued that most strenuously at the time, but, of course, you cannot argue that this year because the Commonwealth has just dropped the whole bundle anyway.

Most of the programs mentioned in Jobs for Canberra are not new. They are programs that were already in place or programs that are funded through remaining Commonwealth grants. One example is the indigenous employment strategy. It says in Jobs for Canberra that this strategy is "designed to improve the employment and career prospects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the ACT". I am not sure whether this is actually the same program that has been in place since 1993, but the description is quite similar. I understand that the budget allocation to this program is $20,000 compared to $110,000 formerly.

Likewise, the GAA program is not new. ACT Youth Joblink has been in place since 1993, and the trades and technical women on the move program first commenced in 1988 as tradeswomen on the move. The new future in small business program is also not a new initiative, but I understand there is some additional money. As for the annual employment grants program, the $290,000 is what is left of the former employment and training grants, $656,000, the youth employment and training program, $184,000, and working opportunities for women, $62,000. Mrs Carnell is also going to create 270 new jobs in the public sector, but this has to be balanced against the 400 or more that have gone in the last 23 months in the ACT Public Service, and the $12m set aside for redundancies in the next 12 months. The Greens are very pleased that there is a new small business incubator in Tuggeranong and congratulate the Government on that initiative.

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