Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like everyone else in this place, I relish the prospect of growing jobs and growing employment. It is regrettable, however, that in the seat of Werriwa—as is the case in the seat of Macarthur—the unemployment rate is almost double the national average. I would like to put to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations some of the underlying assumptions in relation to unemployment. Could the minister confirm that Budget Paper No. 1 states that commodity price stimulus has been evident in the labour market, particularly in relation to construction and mining employment, which grew by 7.6 per cent through the March quarter of 2007? Minister, can you confirm that Budget Paper No. 1 also states that the resource rich states of Queensland and Western Australia grew at a much faster rate—that, in fact, the resource rich states of Queensland and Western Australia grew at a weighted average of 4.9 per cent in 2005-06 compared to 1.9 per cent in New South Wales and Victoria over that same period?

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