Employment Figures

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:20): My question is to the Acting Premier. What is the government's plan to address underemployment for the 95,000 South Australians who have as little as one hour's employment per week?

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) (14:20): It is a good point, and I was starting to warm up to it in my answer to the last question. There is certainly a situation where we would like to see people who are working either less shift work than they used to work, less overtime than they used to work or less regular hours than they used to work, getting more work, obviously.

Mr Marshall: We are going backwards: 11,000 more last month than the month before.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: That is a function of many factors, including how many people are actually in the jobs market. If you actually have a certain number of hours to be worked and you have x number of people to work those hours, you divide x into those number of hours and you get a number. If you make x, 2x or x+6,000, which is what we have done, and you do not change the number of hours to be worked, then obviously mathematically you have the same number of hours spread across more people, which means that some people are working less hours.

We are not suggesting that there is not room for improvement in the economy. That has never been the government's position. The government has said, and I think the Premier has said, repeatedly we have a lot of work to do, and when I say 'we' I mean the government, I mean employers, I mean the opposition. We would love the opposition to get behind—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —planning reform, for example, so that we can actually cut red tape and enable people to invest in construction in South Australia. We would love that to happen. We are sitting here now in fact this afternoon waiting for that to happen so that we can break for Christmas with that all squared away. We are very keen indeed on working cooperatively with industry, and indeed the opposition, to try to get improvements in the job environment here, but we have never, ever suggested that we do not have some work to do. We do, and we accept that. The jobs plans that have been put out by the government, the plans for the north, all of the work—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: The one thing about these questions is, when we have a good result in the labour market, we get questions like this. When we have another blip in the other direction, I think it was—

Ms CHAPMAN: Point of order: he is imputing improper motive on the questioner, now challenging what we should be asking about.

The SPEAKER: I don't think it is imputing improper motive.

Ms Chapman: They're telling us what we should be asking.

The SPEAKER: It is not a point of order I am inclined to uphold. In that gap, I call to order the leader, the deputy leader, the members for Mitchell, Morialta, Stuart, Hartley, Davenport and Kavel, and I am appalled to see that the disorder was so intense that the member for Flinders gets called to order. I warn the member for Morialta and the deputy leader and I warn for the second and final time the member for Morialta. Deputy Premier.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am reminded, actually, of an adage which is attributed to Gore Vidal, who apparently said in one of his novels that, every time a friend of his succeeds, a little piece of him dies. That really is the way in which these basically good figures are being treated by the opposition. There are constructive things they can do. We have—

The SPEAKER: The Deputy Premier will not talk about the opposition. They have not been in government for years. They cannot possibly be germane to the question of underemployment. Deputy Premier.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I thank you, Mr Speaker, for that guidance and, were it not for the fact that their members in the upper house are frustrating the passage of important legislation, I would totally agree with that point.