Page 192 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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provide the bus services to the games. Territory venues and events pays ACTION and then it recovers 50 per cent of the costs from the hirers. This is consistent across rugby union, rugby league, the Australian Football League and cricket.
In addition, I note that clubs and pubs also hire services from ACTION to attend these events. They are outside this arrangement and are invoiced directly by ACTION to the hirer.
Mr Coe, through interjection, asked me with reference to the GWS arrangements how the free travel is recorded for people who are using the entire network. The answer is that GWS patronage and travel on route services can be tracked using the MyWay driver console.
Employment—government support
Debate resumed.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (3.29): I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important topic, and I thank my colleague Ms Berry for her motion. This Labor government is always happy to speak about jobs; our record is there for communities to see and we are proud of it. Our vision for Canberra is that of a vibrant, liveable city that continues to grow and change to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future and to continue to live up to its reputation as Australia’s most liveable city.
As a government, we strongly believe Canberrans deserve the best and, more so, they deserve a government that understands this. The Labor government, in partnership with the Canberra community—employees and businesses—have worked very hard to achieve the prosperity and stability we enjoy today. This is in spite of the devastating global financial crisis, and who can forget the hardship the federal coalition under John Howard imposed on Canberra through its austerity measures?
Economic figures have constantly shown that Canberra’s economy continues to be strong and with very low unemployment. In fact, our unemployment base is one of the lowest in the country. A paper outlining the overview of employment in the ACT shows that participation rates have not only been consistently amongst the highest nationally but also close to 10 per cent above the national rate. The paper also shows that trend unemployment in the ACT has not risen above four per cent since 2004. As of January this year it was 3.8 per cent, the lowest in the country.
This government was left to pick up the pieces after the Howard years and transform the ACT to the strong economy it is today. But this prosperity is once again in jeopardy. We are faced once again with another coalition slash and burn attack on Canberra. We are seeing an immense loss of jobs right across the country since the federal coalition was elected in September last year. It seems every day when you turn on the ABC—or any news—you hear about another loss of jobs.
We know that the then opposition leader, now Prime Minister, was quoted as saying that as many public service jobs as possible should be relocated outside of Canberra.
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