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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-06-20 Daily Xml
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EMPLOYMENT FIGURES

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (14:35): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have had enough of the minister's anger. My question is to the Premier. Given the Premier's comments that losing the AAA credit rating was about jobs, why does the government now forecast the creation of 8,000 fewer jobs between 2012 and 2016 than were forecast in last year's budget, before the loss of the AAA credit rating?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:35): I do not think the two things follow from one another. If we were to have withdrawn from our public investments during the period that the honourable member describes, we would have crated the South Australian economy. We have been through an extraordinarily difficult 2011-12, but what we have seen in the last 10 months is 10 months of continuous job growth.

In fact, in the year to May, South Australia grew stronger in employment growth than any other state in the nation except New South Wales—including Queensland and Western Australia. We grew faster in employment growth over the last 12 months than any other state. The reason we are able to stay here and claim the capacity to do that is that we maintained our public investments at a time when the economy needed them. We are beginning to see, thankfully, the pickup in the private sector.

We are beginning to see an increase in private housing construction activity. We are beginning to see the benefits of our public investments, having now leveraged other private investments. We are seeing it in the Riverbank: two $200 million buildings leveraged off our $2.1 billion investment in the Royal Adelaide Hospital and a further $300 million or so investment in the new casino development off the back of our Riverbank investments. This is the nature of private investment.

In circumstances where the economy is in uncertain times, there is an important role for government to sustain the level of investment in the economy. The fact that we are even talking about 10 continuous months of employment growth and the fact that we have had, in the last 12 months to May, faster growth than the rest of the nation except New South Wales is testimony to the very policies this government decided to put in place.

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