Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2518 ..

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I thought you had warned Mr Corbell.

MR SPEAKER: I did warn Mr Corbell, and we all know the next step. Silence!

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am very interested that Mr Corbell does not want to listen to the answer. Yes, I have admitted that there have not been a thousand jobs with regard to Unisys. There is no doubt about that. No government - - -

Ms McRae: How many other things have you promised that are not right?

Ms Reilly: How many other jobs do not exist?

MRS CARNELL: Ms McRae asks how many other jobs, Mr Speaker. Well, how many other jobs is 7,200 more jobs in Canberra since last November, Mr Speaker. Trend unemployment has dropped from 8.5 per cent to 7.2 per cent. There are 1,800 fewer unemployed people.

Mr Corbell: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did not ask the Chief Minister about the employment statistics in the ACT. I asked her specifically about the Unisys project. If she has finished answering that question, perhaps she can just sit down.

MRS CARNELL: I do not think that is a point of order at all.

MR SPEAKER: I would take up the offer, actually.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, as I said, the Unisys People project is a partnership between CIT and Unisys People and it has not gone as well as I would have liked it to have gone. Equally, we believe that it will significantly speed up now. What is interesting to me, Mr Speaker, is that we do not hear from those opposite about the very good new business figures that have come out from Yellow Pages just over the last two days.

Mr Moore: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think Mr Corbell's point of order was valid. Standing order 118(a) says quite clearly that answers to questions without notice shall be, firstly, concise and, secondly, confined to the subject matter of the question. You have ruled on many occasions that within those parameters Ministers can say what they like; but this Minister is wandering all over the place, whereas the question that Mr Corbell asked was really quite specific. A similar question was asked yesterday and we still do not know the answer to the question.

MR SPEAKER: I think the Minister was concluding, actually.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, that is actually not the case. I have answered the question totally. We do not know how many private sector jobs were created in Sydney or Melbourne. I said that yesterday. How would we? We answered the question on Canberra yesterday and explained the number of courses that were going to go ahead, Mr Speaker; but this is a question, I thought, about jobs in the information technology area, jobs in Canberra, and I would have thought those in this place were interested in that, and were interested in 7,300 new jobs; but obviously not.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .