Page 3883 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 October 2005
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
What can the ACT government do about poverty? The ACT Greens recognise the primacy of the federal government over the ACT government in the taxation, industrial relations and welfare systems. But we also recognise that the ACT government can consider progressive or more effective ways of using the spending and taxing methods within its control. In order to improve the effectiveness of government funding allocated to portfolios involving poverty, I propose that the government reconsider the way it measures poverty and employment in the ACT. The ACT Greens believe that governments, media and business sectors focus too much on the highly artificial and manipulated unemployment rate, which excludes underemployment, the disenfranchised and committed volunteers. Much more useful figures could include the distribution of workers per income and per work hours and the number of residents receiving welfare benefits, as well as poverty rates. Most of these figures are available through the Australian Bureau of Statistics and should be recognised and used on a regular basis to measure the state of our citizens’ income and employment. I trust that the government will use this debate as a trigger to conduct an investigation into such indicators, so that it can better measure the effectiveness of its policies.
On the subject of spending, a common theme amongst the government’s media releases is the support it provides to local business and the development of our information technology industry. While I am generally supportive of such programs, I suspect that government spending on these areas does little for low-skilled and/or low-income workers. Anecdotal evidence indicates that unemployed, skilled Canberrans often move out of the area if they are unemployed, as Canberra is an expensive place to live, leaving a core of low-skilled unemployed who have particular problems that will not be resolved by providing incentives to high-end employers in the IT industries.
The government may also argue that by improving our business sector the net effects will trickle down. But research shows that the trickle-down effect is selective about where it trickles, as companies’ profits stay with company owners and shareholders and not the workers in the company. My motion, therefore, calls on the government to investigate the distribution of its funds to business support versus employment creation. Such an investigation should analyse the effectiveness of government spending and methods of supporting employment creation. One method of supporting employment creation has previously been raised by ACTCOSS, which suggested that the government can support community service organisations and low-skilled workers at the same time by assisting in their employment costs.
The community services sector makes a major contribution to the ACT economy in several ways. First, it is a major and growing employer in the ACT. It makes up around four per cent of the ACT labour market, a larger proportion than the manufacturing, wholesale trade, electricity, gas and water supply, transport and storage, communications services, or finance and insurance sectors. Industry outlooks also suggest that growth in the community services sector will continue to be strong. There is never a shortage of work in the community sector, just a shortage of resources to do it all.
Second, flow-on benefits from community services expenditure has broader and more substantial benefits in spending in almost every other industry area. A dollar spent helping someone find accommodation has a larger flow-on effect in the economy, adding more value and creating more jobs, than a dollar spent on forestry, for instance. Third,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .