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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4954 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

did not care about social justice issues in this town. Unemployment is one of the greatest unjust outcomes of an economy. You are responsible for the greatest unjust outcome in this economy since self-government. We have had the greatest unjust outcome for this economy ever. How dare you come into this place and not mention that.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (3.53), in reply: Mr Speaker, I was very pleased to hear Mr Berry say that unemployment is the most important issue. The Social Security figures for the people actually collecting unemployment benefits this month fell by nearly 100. They fell from 8,462 to 8,360. Those are the people picking up unemployment benefits, the people relying on unemployment benefits to live. I am not for a moment suggesting that any number of unemployed is acceptable. That is the reason that we have been out there in the community and out there in the business world with our business incentive packages making sure that there are new businesses coming to Canberra - - -

Mr Berry: You are looking more and more like a joke every day.

MRS CARNELL: We will see, Mr Berry. We have been out there with our business incentive packages attracting new businesses like EDS today, with 11 jobs now, 200 by the end of next year and possibly 700 in five years' time; and Fujitsu, with 900 full-time jobs over the next three years. More than 30 business incentive packages have now been given, resulting in $60m worth of investment and over 2,000 jobs. Youth500 I am very proud of. I was very pleased that Mr Berry brought that up. Youth500 actually was not our idea, and I am the first to admit that. It came from the Youth Coalition and from a seminar that we organised to get community input into the answer. I believe very strongly that the proposal for Youth500 was a very good one. It brought together business and the Youth Coalition. I am very happy to give credit where credit is due. The credit goes to that seminar in February where business people, the Youth Coalition, the CES and regional interests got together and came up with Youth500 as one of their proposals. They worked very hard to ensure that it came about. We are over 500 now; that is 500 young people with full-time jobs. Mr Berry, to say that that is not all right or that somehow $500,000 spent to ensure that 500 young people have full-time training jobs in the ACT absolutely stuns me. I believe it is the most successful employment scheme we have seen in the ACT since self-government.

There are fewer people picking up unemployment cheques or having them put into their accounts than there were a month ago, but even one is too many. That is the reason we will stay out there with business incentive packages, getting new businesses to come to Canberra, getting new jobs created in the ACT, keeping our retail figures as buoyant as they are, keeping our private sector consumption higher than the national average and keeping the growth in full-time jobs in the ACT up, with 6,400 new full-time jobs since last year. I do not think that is a bad result when you consider that our biggest single employer in the ACT has downsized by some 10,000. To have reduced the operating loss from $349m to $153m this year when we are tracking at a similar rate to that for last year and when we have more full-time jobs in the economy than when we came to power, I do not think is a bad effort over the last couple of years, but I certainly do not expect Mr Berry to agree.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

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