Unemployment Figures

Mr PISONI (Unley) (14:29): My question is to the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion. What is the social impact of the ABS figures showing a rise in the male unemployment rate in South Australia, which has now trended up from 5.2 per cent to 8.3 per cent, since the government promised to create 100,000 new jobs back in 2010?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:29): I thank the honourable member for his question.

Mr Pengilly interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Finniss is called to order.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: It's actually a very important question. It goes to the structure of the growing segments of the economy and the declining segments of the economy. There is a basic truth behind the proposition—and this is not universal. In general terms, the growing sectors of the economy are disproportionately clustered into—

Mr Pederick: What about the dying segments?

The SPEAKER: I warn the member for Hammond.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —what have traditionally been known as female occupations, and the declining sectors of the economy have been clustered into what has traditionally been described as male occupations. So we are seeing a very substantial divergence in the male and female unemployment rate, and this does have very profound social impacts, of course, at the level of the men who are directly affected in terms of their wellbeing and their capacities, but it also raises some important issues about household formation. The truth is that the traditional household formation has many women more proportionately doing more work around the home than men. They do more part-time work and it may challenge some of those household formations.

As we do grapple with the changes that are occurring in our workforce, it may well be that households are going to have to revisit, potentially, who is the principal breadwinner, and that will be a challenge to the identity of certain men within the household. That is a profound change in the social construct. They are all things we're going to have to grapple with. Obviously we want to arrest the decline in those traditional male occupations, but the truth is a lot of these trends are well established now and we're going to have to grapple with the social consequences that flow.