J\, AUSTR A IA w
F17 MEDIA 2 SEPTEMBER 1979
ELECTORATE TALK
We are all concerned about unemployment. We are concerned
about men and women, particularly young men and women, who
can't find jobs.
Unemployment is not just a list of monthly figures from the
Bureau of Statistics. It is a very real and personal problem.
As the national Government, we have a clear obligation to do
what we can to overcome that problem. How should we tackle
it? What is the best course?
In constant examination of unemployment, without exception
and without equivocation, the Government comes back time
an'" again to the only real solution, and that is the only
way to create new and permanent and satisfying jobs: the
p r cmo~ ion of sound economic growth.
It is in business and manufacturing and in farming that the
wealth of our country is at work. It is here, and only here,
that lasting and produl-tive new jobs are created.
Over the last year private employment has started to grow
again. In the twelve months to May, civilian employment
has increased by more than 60,000, private employment increased.
by more than 50,000. In addition to sound economic growth
we recognise that there are many people in the Australian
community who need special help in their search for jobs.
By the end of this financial year, more than half a million
Australians, many of them young men and women, will have been
assist'-ed into rewarding jobs through our various tra-ining
programmes. These program-Les are under constant examination
so they can be improved where necessary to help those most
in need of them.
The Labor Party professes concern for the unemployed. Perhaps
they are concerned, but the brutal reality is that in the long
run their alternate policies would do more to add to unemployment
than to reduce it.
Let's look at how false and shallow Labor's. policy really is.
Labor has put forward a scheme to employ 50,000 peopl~ e. They
claim it would cost between $ 85 and $ 100 million a year. / 2
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For some that may seem an attractive idea on the surface.
The reality is that the cost of employing one person, and
that includes wages, workers compensation, material and
equipment, higher costs, transport and accommodation as
well as expenses associated with the supervision and
administration of the scheme would be just over $ 12,000
a year. That is $ 240 a week subsidy by the taxpayers of
Australia for each person under Labor's make-work scheme.
Acco'rdingly, the total cost of employing Labor's 50,000
people would be nearer $ 600 million a year. That is your
tax, put into the kind of make-work scheme abandoned by
the Leader of the opposition when he was Treasurer in the
Labor Government of 1975, yet he would do it all again.
He would ask tChe taxpayer for a massive subsidy to p--op
up a form of his abandoned, artificial scheme to emp-oy
Australians. So that is $ 600 million a year to crea :. e
50,000 Government jobs.
In addition to that, the Labor Party has said that would
subsidise all net additions to employment by giving employers
the equivalent of unemployment benefits for any net dditions
to the workforce. That would be a very expensive policy
indeed. The only way such a scheme could be worked would
be on a company or a firm basis. Even while employrru., nt is
relatively static, there are many firms which are doing better
and expanding their workforces, because those firms are doing
better, because they are selling more. This particular
scheme would involve an additional Government hand-out of
several hundreds of millions of dollars, and much of it would
be subsidising employment, additional employment, that would
take place anyway, merely because particular firms are doing
better. Some would make the point " Well, at least it is reducing
unemployment and finding work for those who want it". But
my answer is plain, and I think it is a fair one..
I talked a little earlier about creating the right conditions
for economic growth. That is not just creating conditions
for profits and expansion. It creates conditions for real
and lasting jobs. Let me illustrate the point.
Over the next few years in Western Australia, because of
investment in the oil and aluminium industry, some 35,000 new
jobs will be generated. They will be lasting jobs, they.
will be secure and rewarding. At the same time in New South
Wales and Victoria, because of expansion in the aluminium
industry alone, some 20,000 new jobs will be created, That
is. a total of 55,000 new permanent, productive and secure
jobs in private industry. They won't be a burden on the
taxpayer. They'll come out of industry that has the confidence
to expand and develop because it knows that the Government
is committed to responsible economic management. Surely there
could be no starker contrast than that approach and Labor's
hand-out mentality. / 3
-3-
of course it is not just in oil and aluminium that new jobs
are being created. it is happening in industry aiter industry.
M4r Hayden's economic policies would retrun Australia to the
big deficit, galloping inflation days of Mr Whitlam. The extra
money Mr Hayden wants to spend on unemployment programmes,
make-work government jobs and other spending programmaes, would
so expand the deficit that many people would cease to have
confidence in the strength of the Australian economy. Under
those circumstances we would not get a growth in jobs in the
private sect%-or. Indeed, private sector jobs could well'fall
as tL. hey did when Labor was in office once before. who will
ever forget that in one year of Labor, unemployment rose by
almost 200,000.
Labor policies totally ignore inflation. Mr Hayden -Thould
ask industry what they think of a policy that ignoreI ~ in
He should think back to a time when inflation almost wrecked
Australian industry, as it struggled to survive and omp%= te for
markets here and abroad when Labor's policies pushed inflation
much above the inflation figures of many other developed
countries in North America and in Europe.
Now, even if there are some additional inflationary pressures
within Australia, our inflation is much below that of many
countries in Europe. In Britain it is about 15 or 16 per cent,
and in America it is now about 14 per cent on an annual basis.
At around nine per cent ours is much lower. We intend to keep
it that way, so Australian firms and industries can become
more codipetive, sell more and get more jobs.
Put bluntly, the Labor Party refuses to come to grips with
* the simple fact that jobs come from industry that is confident
and expanding. That will only happen if industry is competitive
and is given incentive to invest and take risks. That is what
my Government has aimed at over the last three and a half years.
We don't think profit is a dirty word. It is from profits that
expansion takes place, and with expansion new jobs are created.
Our incentives to promote exports and development, and above
all our determination to keep up the fight against inflation,
will do more to provide jobs for Australians , who want to work.