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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-04-10 Daily Xml
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EMPLOYMENT

Ms BREUER (Giles) (14:18): Will the Premier inform the house of today's good news on jobs in South Australia?

The Hon. M.D. RANN (Ramsay—Premier, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change) (14:18): I am very pleased to report to the house—

The Hon. M.D. RANN: I ask you to go back six years, and the closing days of a government in which the Leader of the Opposition was one of its most celebrated, if short-lived, ministers. There are now more than 87,000 more South Australians in work than when the Liberals were in power. In fact, if you look at the other set of figures, it is nearly 90,000 more people in jobs in South Australia than there were when the Liberals were in power. So let us just go through this in terms of what today's figures say.

Youth employment used to be around 40 per cent. These are the figures out of Canberra. Last month the South Australian economy broke records and set new highs for total jobs for the number of South Australians in full-time jobs, and delivered an all-time low in unemployment.

This is the lowest unemployment ever recorded in South Australia, the biggest number of people in jobs in South Australia ever recorded, and also the biggest number of people in full-time jobs ever recorded. Full-time employment rose to a new high of 535,200, the thirteenth consecutive monthly rise. The state's trend unemployment rate dropped to 4.5 per cent, the lowest ever recorded.

This is a key point: we are outperforming the nation in the creation of jobs. Over the past year the rate of jobs growth has been 2.7 per cent nationwide, and here in South Australia it has been 3.2 per cent. So, the rate of jobs growth in South Australia has exceeded national jobs growth over the last year. That is a critically important part of what is aimed for in terms of the State Strategic Plan.

This means that we added an extra 24,000 jobs to the economy in this state in the past year. It also means that we are meeting our South Australian Strategic Plan target to better the national rate of jobs growth. The bottom line is—if the Leader of the Opposition wants to put his credentials against ours—we have 87,100 additional jobs now compared to when he was a minister in a Liberal government, nearly 90,000 more South Australians in work. That is because we have seen about $45 billion worth of major projects on the horizon.

I want to compare this record to that of members opposite when they were in government for more than eight years: years of high unemployment, when new jobs were being created at less than half the present rate, and when there was almost no growth in full-time jobs at all. Your only policy then was privatisation; your only policy in the future is privatisation with a stadium attached.

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