State Economy

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (15:16): A lot has changed since the election, and not for the better when it comes to the South Australian economy. Just hours ago, the ABS released the latest unemployment statistics. Nationally, it is steady as she goes, but here in South Australia it is a very different story.

South Australia's unemployment rate has risen to 4.6 per cent and is now, standalone, the worst in the country. This is a far cry from December last year, under the former Liberal government, when we had the lowest unemployment rate since records began in 1978. It is disappointing news for South Australia, and I fear that this government have no real plan to create local jobs. Their own budget, which was handed down just two weeks ago, forecast that the jobs growth rate was to plummet from 3.25 per cent to just 1 per cent over the forward years, and we are starting to see this come to fruition.

More broadly, when it comes to the unemployment figures, worryingly the unemployment rate here in South Australia was 6.5 per cent, and South Australia also now leads the nation in this category alone. Our participation rate remains the lowest on mainland Australia at 63.2 per cent. However, the worrying news is not just contained to the unemployment rate.

Business confidence has taken a U-turn, for lack of a better term. Since the election, 20 points have been wiped off the business confidence rating, as maintained by NAB as part of their Monthly Business Survey. The Treasurer was very quick to try to take credit for nation-leading business confidence just weeks after the election, and in his press release he chose to use the trend data points to demonstrate this. Of course, the trend set takes into account previous monthly results and also reflects the work of the former Liberal government policy.

In reality, the April NAB result reflected an 11-point drop in business confidence, and earlier this week we found out that the May results reflect another nine-point drop. Now our business confidence rating is just six points in the positive and, on the monthly stats, we no longer maintain the highest business confidence in the nation. We have dropped to mid-pack. That is 20 points of business confidence erased since the Labor Party and Peter Malinauskas came to power. We know the cost of living and the cost of doing business have risen and are still rising. Inflation, interest rates, lettuce, petrol, groceries, putting food on the table—the greatest misses of this recent budget was the lack of broad-based relief in terms of cost of living.

I genuinely hope that these trends start to turn around. It seems as though business in the state does not have much confidence in this pro-business Labor Premier. The Premier's answers so far have involved pushing out major job-creating infrastructure projects. The debacle that has taken place in the last week, with regard to the return to work amendments, only further adds uncertainty for business. It certainly does not create confidence. It has upped costs or most likely will up costs. How much those costs are going up we do not know. We need to wait to see some detail. We need to see some third-party analysis.

The Liberal Party has always prided itself on our economic credentials and job creation, bringing industry to South Australia. There is no better testament to that vision than just down the road in Lot Fourteen. We have seen the development of new industries. We have seen young people instead of leaving South Australia coming to South Australia to see their futures. We need business confidence to be high in the state. We need businesses to understand that the cost of doing business in this state is competitive. South Australia is a great place. We need to make sure it maintains that status moving forward.