Margaret May (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer outline to the House the results of the January labour force survey. What are the prospects for employment growth in the future?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for McPherson for her question. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released its labour force survey for January today, which showed that employment increased by 1,800 persons in January and has increased now by 159,400 persons through the year. Interestingly, full-time employment rose by 30,500 persons but part-time employment fell by 28,700. Notwithstanding the rise in employment, the unemployment rate edged up marginally to 5.3 per cent in January. This is consistent with some of the surveys that we have seen such as the ANZ job ads survey and the ABS skill vacancies. The rate of job creation in the economy has been slowing in recent months compared to the very fast rises that we had through 2003 and 2004.

The point that I have also made in relation to this is that we cannot rely on the cycle to generate continued reductions in the unemployment rate. We are probably at a cyclical low in relation to unemployment after the strong growth that we have had through many years. If we want to make further inroads into unemployment in this country, now we must deal with structural barriers in the labour market and in particular the most important structural barrier in the labour market—that is, improvement of Australia’s labour relations system and industrial relations reform. These reforms will generate increased productivity, they will give more people opportunity, they will give flexibility to the work force and they will empower Australia to become a much more open and flexible economy. These are the reforms which the government has been battling over for years and years to get in place. The legislation has finally gone through the Senate.

That is not the end of this process. It is the beginning of this process. Those laws are yet to take effect and they are yet to be used by Australian businesses. We would certainly recommend that Australian businesses carefully consider them and carefully consider the way in which they can improve productivity and employment outcomes.

It is worth noting, as we come up to the 10th anniversary of this government in March 2006 that since the government was elected there have created in the Australian economy 1.7 million new jobs. That is, 1.7 million more people are in work today than when the Labor Party left office. It has been a strong decade, but there is more work to go.