Page 3801 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 29 October 2014
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It was quite amusing—except for the implications of it—that on one day recently we had the Chief Minister putting out a press release saying that she was going to deliver an upbeat speech on the economy. Yet the night before, at a tourism function, there was the Deputy Chief Minister dragging us down, talking about us being abandoned, saying that we are on our own yet again. It is interesting.
And it is interesting to see the effect of our civic leaders in making sure that they take the right approach in how they deliver it. If you listen to Mr Barr, you think that everything is the fault of the Abbott government. There is absolutely no mention that 14,473 of the proposed 16,500 job losses were Labor job losses. Some 87 per cent of those job losses were from the Labor Party. Where was Mr Barr when that budget was delivered? Missing in action. Missing in action, like he always is on every Labor budget that hurts the ACT.
Cast your mind back, members, to when there were cuts by the federal Labor government to the National Gallery. What did Mr Barr say? He said that these were good things, that this was good for Canberra somehow. Even Senator Lundy, the next morning, when asked to support Mr Barr, said that, no, she could not come at that one. There we had the chief cheerleader for the Rudd government—the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, depending on what day it was, that slashed 14,473 jobs from the Australian public service, much of which would come from the ACT—and this man was mute. Mute. No wonder we have got trouble in our employment. No wonder there is trouble for younger people in employment. No wonder there is trouble for investment and retail when this Treasurer talks us down.
Let me go to equipment investment. Equipment investment is down the most on a year ago in the ACT—down 33 per cent. That is business voting with its dollars. It is not investing for the future. It does not see a lift coming, because it is not putting money into equipment. That is a condemnation of this government.
Let me go to unemployment in the ACT. We are at the bottom of the pile, members. In terms of winners and losers on jobs, Northern Territory is the winner, ACT the loser. Again let me quote from the report:
In the ACT, trend unemployment is second lowest in the nation at 4.6 per cent, but this is up from 3.5 per cent in April and is now just over 34 per cent above its “normal” or decade-average rate level—the worst performance in the nation.
The minister was happy in August to say, “Unemployment, good.” There is Mr Barr on the record:
The ACT economy continues to produce jobs … The trend number of ACT residents in employment increased …
The reality is that we are the worst performing in the country according to this report.
Let me go to construction work. The ACT is second last—second last after Tasmania. The next weakest after Tasmania is the ACT, where construction work is just 2.6 per cent above decade averages. We all hear about the transformational light rail: “Light
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