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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3018 ..

from a single quarter. The Sensis and Chamber of Commerce reports over the last two quarters have reported rapid declines in confidence and expectation with a flat outlook rather than anything else. Any economist worth their salt knows that many results for a single quarter often need to be revised, sometimes quite substantially as later data becomes available. Even the biggest and the best—in this case the Bureau of Statistics, one of the most eminent statistical organisations in the world—revises statistics on a regular basis as the fuller data becomes available and is reviewed.

It is silly of the government to base a view of the ACT economy, and indeed employment in the ACT, on a single report from a human relations company. The latest unemployment stats show the unemployment rate for 15- to 19-year-olds is 18.8 per cent in the ACT. We need to be careful with that figure. There is a little caveat at the bottom of the page that says, “The estimate is subject to sampling variability which is too high for most practical purposes”. You have to keep that in mind with youth unemployment because there is a question of whether they should be attending full-time education, if they are not. If they are attending full-time education—we all know that argument.

Let us look at Hudson. Hudson’s are recruitment and human resource consultants, known in the trade as search consultants. Their expertise is not in economic analysis; it is limited to working with employers to attract, select, engage, develop and retain the people they need to succeed—and they are good at it. They are one of those firms that have a long history. They have had several name changes recently. What they do best is recruit. The Hudson Report looks at employment and HR trends. But there is a lot more to the ACT economy than what Hudson’s essentially narrow take is based on—the outlook of their clients. Hudson should be seen in the light of, say, the Sensis business index, a much more broadly based measure and one often quoted by the Treasurer, who is an economist and who obviously, therefore, knows much more about these things than Mr Hargreaves. What does Sensis say? A report in the Canberra Times of Tuesday, 25 May, states:

Business confidence in the ACT has fallen below the national average, a new survey has revealed.

The May 2004 Sensis Business Index—Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)—found business confidence in the ACT had fallen for the second consecutive quarter.

Sensis chief economist Steven Shepherd said confidence … was … 6 per cent below the national average. “This means business confidence in the ACT has declined 23 percentage points in just six months.” Mr Shepherd said.

That would be the six months following the release of the white paper. That is an interesting commentary on the white paper and this government’s economic performance. Another paragraph reads:

Sensis reported SME support for the policies of the ACT and NSW Governments had experienced the largest fall across the nation for the quarter. With a decline of 18 per cent, approval for the ACT Government was now at 12 per cent.

That matches some of what the Chamber of Commerce said the other day. It said that for over six years we have had conditions that are positive, but for the past two quarters we have had a situation where confidence is flat—the same two quarters since the release of

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