Employment Figures

Ms LUETHEN (King) (14:12): My question is to the Premier.

Mr Picton: About Service SA?

The SPEAKER: The member for Kaurna is warned.

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is warned.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for West Torrens is on one warning.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: If the leader and the member for West Torrens continue this way, they will be departing today.

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is warned. The member for King has the call.

Ms LUETHEN: Thank you, Mr Speaker, my question is to the Premier. Can the Premier please update the house on today's ABS labour force statistics and how the state government is delivering more jobs for South Australia?

The SPEAKER: The Premier has the call and I would like to hear this answer.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:12): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I would like to provide some information to the parliament, to this chamber, because I think that there are some encouraging signs of economic recovery in South Australia seven months into the new government.

As you may or may not be aware, sir, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has brought down its unemployment rate statistics for the month of September. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has fallen in South Australia to 5.5 per cent. In fact, that puts us in third position nationally. We were always at the bottom of the table under Labor. Since there has been a change of government, I think that there has been a change in sentiment in South Australia.

We think that these statistics are extraordinarily encouraging, but there is a huge amount of additional work to do to deliver on our ambition to get this state fully back on track and to make sure that young people finishing school, finishing university, have quality jobs to stay here in South Australia. I also would like to reflect on one other statistic that occurred today, and that looked at the number of people who have been employed in South Australia or who are employed in South Australia this September compared with September last year, and it is a staggering figure.

An additional 10,800 South Australians find themselves employed in South Australia over the last 12 months. That is a fantastic statistic for our state, but, as I said, there is far more work to be done. We are looking forward to the $90 billion worth of defence contracts which are coming our way in South Australia. In particular, the new government is doing everything that it possibly can to have the skilled workforce ready to deliver on the fullest amount of this work that we can possibly bring into this state.

I know that the Minister for Industry and Skills has been working extraordinarily hard on this, and we have already announced more than $200 million of new money in the next four years going into creating more than 20,000 new apprenticeships and traineeships. We are doing this because we want to drive the unemployment rate lower, and we want to drive the employment rate even higher, so that's exactly what we are doing.

We have spoken in this chamber before about our exciting plans for Lot Fourteen, the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site. We have a much greater ambition for this site than turning it into a housing development. Thirteen hundred apartments on that site that would have created some initial construction jobs. We are not denying that, but we think that our vision for this site—an incubator-accelerator for the future industries in this state, in this country and in the world—is exactly the right purpose for this incredibly exciting seven hectare position in our state.

I am also extraordinarily excited about 1 January next year because that's the date that our new payroll tax regime comes into play. We believe this will be a further stimulus to create more jobs. It is interesting because people opposite—you can only hear them mumbling nowadays; they are not very cogent—ask, 'Why don't you do these things earlier?' This is the same party that, in the lead-up to the election, said that this would just be putting more money back into employers' pockets. Now they are advocating for it. They talked about people being in the employer class, as though there were two classes in South Australia.

We want to improve the conditions for businesses to go out and employ more South Australians. That's our ambition. We are heading in the right direction and we are going to be doing everything we can to accelerate it.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: As of 1 January, there will not be a business in South Australia with a payroll of up to $1.5 million that will be paying a cent anymore. That's what we are doing. It's a good start, but there is a lot further to go.

The SPEAKER: I call the Deputy Premier and the education minister to order, and I warn, for the first time, the members for Playford and Lee. The Leader of the Opposition has the call.