YOUTH —
UNEMPLOYMENT
539. Mrs L.M. HARVEY to the Premier:
I
refer to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data released today that
highlights that Western Australia's unemployment rate continues
to be the second highest in the nation and well above the national average. Can
the Premier confirm that youth unemployment has jumped a further 1.5 per cent
to 16.7 per cent and that our youth have been left behind by his government?
Mr M.
McGOWAN replied:
The
state of Western Australia, like the rest of the country and the rest of the
world, is confronting a pandemic and an economic situation that we have
not seen in 100 years. This is obviously a very difficult thing to deal with.
We have been working very hard to get jobs and opportunities back into the Western
Australian economy in a COVID-safe way. As the Leader of the Opposition might
know, we have opened up our economy within our hard borders, far greater than
any other state in Australia. Our rules around cafes, restaurants, bars, pubs,
the casino and the like are far more relaxed than any other state in Australia,
and that is because we do not have community spread of COVID-19. Members will find
that that is not the situation in other states.
The
figures handed down today are encouraging. They show that Western Australia has
recorded the strongest growth in employment of all mainland states and
territories. A total of 19 200 Western Australians found work in July. Half of
those were in full-time jobs. Western Australia has now recovered more than 41 000
jobs that were lost since the start of the pandemic. The number of
people currently employed in Western Australia is higher than what it was when
we came to government. There are now 10 000 more Western Australians in work
than in March 2017. Obviously, there is a long way to go and there is a lot
more work to do, but our recovery plan we launched a few weeks ago is very
devoted to and focused on getting as much employment back as possible.
Obviously, our hard border allows us to open up the economy far more than we
otherwise would have been able to do had the border come down, as the Liberal
Party advocated.