Yesterday’s 8.8 per cent unemployment figure follows a trend of increasing unemployment which began late last year.
The figures have produced the usual round of political blame throwing. However, the greater share of the blame … insofar as blame can be placed in a domestic political quarter … must lie with the Labor Party. And if the trend continues the Labor Party must continue to wear the blame. This is because it has refused to allow through the Senate several reforms that the Coalition Government asserts are critical to turning around high unemployment … particularly youth unemployment.
The Coalition asserts that it expects small business to be the engine of employment. The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures … 1994-95 … show that in recent times this has not been the case. Large and medium businesses have been employing more people. This fact does not put the lie to the Coalition’s case, rather it strengthens it. It means that under the conditions that prevailed in 1994-95 small business could not get its head above water to employ people in the numbers it would like. If conditions change, small business might be able to employ more people. Indeed, business in general might be able to employ more people.
However, while reform to industrial relations is held up in the Senate and while cuts to public spending are denied, employment … according to the Coalition … will be affected. It puts the Opposition in a bind: it must either test the Coalition’s assertion by allowing it to implement its mandate or wear the opprobrium for laying down anti-employment conditions in government and blocking their reversal in Opposition.