Editorial: Premier’s pre-COVID failures remain
After five years of talk about jobs, the latest shock jobless figures show the Palaszczuk Government has not been able to generate the conditions necessary to create the work Queensland needs, writes The Editor.
Opinion
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THE latest unemployment statistics have blown the Palaszczuk Government’s election rhetoric apart and exposed the key problem that afflicted the Queensland economy before the COVID crisis.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her ministers have been racing around the Sunshine State claiming their decision to close the borders has allowed Queensland to get back on its feet. However, that’s not true.
Yesterday’s Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force figures showed Queensland had the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 7.7 per cent on a seasonally-adjusted basis.
That’s right. Worse than COVID-riddled Victoria despite that state’s harsh lockdown and worse than New South Wales where cases continue to show up.
Worse also than other states like West Australia, South Australia and Tasmania which have also maintained border closures.
Treasurer Cameron Dick attempted to talk up the participation rate, saying 1000 jobs a day were created in September which was a positive sign.
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“What that means is more people are back looking for work in Queensland,” Mr Dick said. Sure they are looking. The problem is that they are not finding anything.
The Palaszczuk Government can’t even point towards the usual population growth as the reason why unemployment is worse in Queensland than other states given the border closures – both state and national – mean the number of people immigrating to Queensland is nearly non-existent.
Figures show so-called “zombie businesses” – those kept alive through the federally-funded JobKeeper – are beginning to fall over, forcing their workers into jobless queues. With borders closed and confidence shot, many of these businesses will be in tourism areas.
It’s all well and good for senior Palaszczuk Government ministers to parade around with their “economic plan” whenever they are in camera view but they have been caught out on the question of whether they expect it to work by not setting an unemployment target.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk yesterday went as far to say the ambitious five per cent target named by the LNP was “irresponsible” although she did not explain how.
Yet at the same time Federal Labor has been chastising the Morrison Government over its national six per cent in four years target, saying it “lacked ambition”.
Surely the real lack of ambition is not being willing to name a target at all before Queenslanders go to the polls on October 31?
Mr Dick insists JobKeeper is masking the true condition of unemployment in other states where restrictions are still in place.
But that doesn’t explain why closed West Australia, which was able to produce a budget surplus, has an unemployment rate a full point lower than Queensland’s.
The fact is the Sunshine State was dogged by stubbornly high unemployment before COVID came along and while it had tracked down over time, this was in line with the rest of the country.
After five years of talk about jobs, the Palaszczuk Government had not been able to generate the conditions necessary to create the work Queensland needs.
Before coronavirus, The Courier-Mail’s long-running right direction/wrong direction poll of public sentiment was at its worst ebb in many years as frustration grew about the lack of improvement in the Queensland economy.
The COVID crisis has masked that as people focused on the pandemic. However, our nation-leading jobless rate shows the problem that caused that sentiment to decline still exists.