Page 2177 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 August 2006
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was all a result of the actions of the Liberal Party. That is the nature, I guess, of political exchange and it is what we would have expected.
In the face of a record Australian accounting standard surplus of $176 million, announced today, one would have expected and hoped for a touch of graciousness from the shadow Treasurer, a touch of an acceptance that perhaps the economy is strong and perhaps some acceptance that this government has delivered five consecutive surpluses and has a right to accept some responsibility for that.
Mr Mulcahy: Under GFS?
MR STANHOPE: We accept, too, the kudos that will come for taking the tough decisions and moving to the GFS, something that the Liberal Party was not prepared to do because it was not prepared for the long term. It was not prepared to build from solid foundations; it simply wanted an electoral cycle, election to election, attitude or reflection of its own behaviours. We see that in a whole range of areas, most particularly today and over coming months, in relation to the lack of engagement by the Liberal Party in the most important policy debate of the day; namely, public education.
The ACT economy is moving. I am proud of it and pleased at the extent to which the economy is strong. The job market is going from strength to strength. The economy is booming. We have seen the creation of 17,000 jobs in the ACT since we came to government five years ago. The unemployment rate has dropped by a full two percentage points. That is truly remarkable. When we came to government the unemployment rate was five per cent; it is now 2.8 per cent—our lowest on record. No jurisdiction, as I said earlier, has ever recorded an unemployment rate that low. The last state to come close before the territory was the Northern Territory.
The latest figures also show—and this is a very significant figure—that 49 per cent of the paid work force are women. The trend unemployment rate for women is a staggering 2.2 per cent. It is quite interesting to differentiate those unemployment rates for men and women. The trend unemployment rate for women in the Australian Capital Territory, the 49 per cent of women in the paid work force, is 2.2 per cent. The work force participation rate for men is 77.7 per cent—an absolutely staggering participation rate by men in the ACT. Mr Mulcahy even derides the fact that we have been able to achieve such high rates of employment. We are a most employable community. Interestingly, in relation to that participation rate, it is seven per cent higher than in New South Wales. He cannot have it both ways.
The mantra from the Liberal Party today is that we are being rated out of existence and we will all go to New South Wales. Why is it, if we are being rated out of existence, if this is now the place of least attraction and if this is the place that will not attract investment and will not be able to hold its work force, that we find, in relation to every indicator, that we leave New South Wales for dead? We hear it today in this speech from Mr Mulcahy: we will all be rooned; all our workers will fly up the highway to Sydney to escape the rates boom in the ACT.
We find that our participation rate is a full seven per cent higher than in New South Wales. We find that in relation to housing affordability—this other force that, according to the profit accounts from the Liberal Party, is going to force all investors and all
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