Employment Figures

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:17): Supplementary, sir: is the Deputy Premier aware of how many people are underemployed in South Australia?

Mr Pengilly: Ring Bernie.

The SPEAKER: The member for Finniss is warned. Deputy Premier.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (14:17): Look, I'm not here as the interpreter of the statistical—

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

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

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I can do no better or worse than to refer the honourable member and others to the statistics which have been published. I'm not here to provide a commentary on individual elements of them. All I can say is what I said before. We would like to see a higher participation rate, and we are actually seeing in these figures a higher participation rate. We would like to see people who are working working longer hours; but, of course, whether people are working longer or shorter hours depends on whether or not the businesses for which they work are being given a lot of work to do or not as much work as they would like.

We're not running away from the fact that there are businesses in South Australia, particularly those that have had some association with the automotive industry and are looking at that period of difficulty that lies ahead with the transition to Holden's phasing their production here in South Australia out of existence. Of course, there are areas in the economy where there is underemployment. But equally and interestingly enough, today two of my ministerial colleagues and I, the Minister for Industry and Trade and the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, had a meeting with a series of employers who are people who are in the cast metals and metals fabricating engineering sort of space in the small to medium-sized firms. They are saying there are some difficulties they are facing, due to the mining industry downturn, amongst other things.

They are also acknowledging, interestingly enough, that there are some opportunities. It was very interesting to have a chat to them about the potential for them to take advantage of some of the programs that the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure and Mr Nightingale are working on in terms of increasing local participation in industry employment opportunities. There are efforts going on all over the place to make sure we get more people in jobs and more people working longer hours.