Page 3818 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 29 October 2014
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Labor and federal Liberal, and none of us like it. We are a small jurisdiction, we are very beholden to them. It really is time that we looked at our own potential and steered our own way, but we know from the Treasurer’s own budget documents that he says the deficits are temporary because federal spending will return to normal levels. Well, if you are waiting on that, good luck to you. There is a train coming too, apparently.
It is about jobs, Madam Speaker, particularly for young people. There was an article on ABC news online on 17 October entitled “Canberra suffering shortage of entry level jobs from youth, Anglicare says”. The article states:
There is a shortage of entry level jobs for young workers in the ACT, a charity investigation has found.
Anglicare collected and examined job advertisements from newspapers and websites over a two week period in September.
It found that fewer than 15 per cent of the positions advertised were suitable for people with no qualifications or experience.
That is the reality out there for a large number of people—there are not jobs for them. That is why we need to diversify the economy. At one end with our IT firms and our high tech there are jobs for the very well qualified. But those starter jobs, whether they be in retail, whether they be in hospitality, largely with small business, they are the sorts of jobs we should be looking at.
Mr Rattenbury quoted from the Deloitte report on red tape today. Yes, a lot of it is red tape that businesses create for themselves. It is red tape I suspect to cope with government red tape. There is an interesting section that starts on page 55 in a sort of a highlight box that says that it is no wonder that almost one in four new workers in the professional services sector from 2006 to 2011 was a compliance worker. What are they complying with? Government red tape.
The professional services sector is a large part of Canberra. Let’s face it, there are not too many mining, agricultural or manufacturing jobs here. The report says that the professional services sector encompasses a very diverse bunch including lawyers, accountants, management consultants, tax advisers, advertisers, IT workers and marketers. This sector has added a layer of complexity because many members of this group—for example, the lawyers and accountants—also provide compliance services for others, as does the administrative services sector. That is a significant portion of our economy.
If you turn over to page 56, there is a chart on state and territory compliance sector intensity. The Australian index is 100 per cent. Tasmania is under, South Australia is under, Queensland is under, WA is under, Victoria is just on the mark, as is New South Wales, Northern Territory is slightly above at 120 per cent, and the ACT is at 250 per cent—2½ times the national average. It says it is state and territory compliance sector intensity and it is hard to determine whether or not in that you include the federal government. But it goes on to say that there is no surprise that Canberra is Australia’s compliance capital. Chart A2 shows Canberrans are 2.5 times more likely to be working in compliance roles than is true of the nation as a whole.
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