Page 3069 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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Third World countries, what we would consider poverty would be considered considerable luxury. We need to keep all of this in perspective. This is not to say that we should ignore people in Australia who are in particular need.
Over the last 10 or 11 years, we have seen a significant turnaround in economic fundamentals, which will create a situation where fewer and fewer people should be living in poverty. We should be looking at the underlying economic strength and foundations of our society. We need to keep in mind that in 1990 our per capita income in Australia was in the bottom third of OECD countries; it has now recovered and our per capita income is in the top third of OECD countries. This is no accident; this is the result of the extraordinary hard work and commitment by the commonwealth government and of not taking our eye off the ball. It is no accident that we have shored up the foundations of our economy—the best possible way to find a way out of poverty for most people—so that we now have living standards that are unsurpassed except perhaps by the United States.
These are the basic foundations. Another sure ticket out of poverty, as I said, is to ensure high employment and good employment prospects for people. In the past few years we have seen unemployment fall, from 8.2 per cent in 1996 to 4.3 per cent—and falling. In the ACT it is down below three per cent; 2.4 per cent is the last figure that I recall seeing. These are substantial improvements. Back in 1994 and 1995—when I was a commonwealth public servant working in the department of employment, looking at the Keating government’s Working Nation projects and the work done by the then minister for employment, Kim Beazley—there was a level of despair which I had never encountered before. I recall a speech made by the then minister saying that Australia could never again get its employment down below five per cent—that we were committed to continual high levels of unemployment. The lie has been put to that with 11 years of hard work by the commonwealth government. These are the fundamentals that underlie our fight, in the ACT and Australia, against poverty.
It was interesting to listen to the Chief Minister and Ms MacDonald talk about what is happening in the ACT. There are some good things happening. I recall recently complimenting the minister for family services on some of the programs that are being used to address poverty by early intervention and ensuring that families do not fall into neglect and their children are not neglected. They are very laudable programs, and much of what is done by the family centres is laudable.
But it was interesting that Mr Stanhope skated over some other things. He mentioned—I think he thought he got away with it—some of the issues that really do compound poverty: things like access to transport and access to education. What a fine history the Stanhope government has, especially over the last year or so, in those two areas! We have seen people in the ACT who are genuinely socially disadvantaged having their schools closed. When you look at the work done and the decisions made to close particular schools, what did those opposite do? For the most part, they attempted to close schools in areas with low socioeconomic background.
We have seen the closure of West Belconnen high school, and now the closure of Holt and Higgins; we have seen the downgrading of Southern Cross primary school in my electorate. These are all areas with low socioeconomic background where access to
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