‘That’s not how things work’: Questions over LNP’s jobs target

As the LNP promises to get Queensland back to a 5 per cent unemployment rate an economist has questioned exactly how the party hopes to achieve the target.

Deb Frecklington says she will need to create 73,000 jobs to reach her ambitious 5 per cent unemployment target, as an economist warned it was “courageous” to promise a jobless rate.

The government seized on the numbers yesterday to accuse Ms Frecklington of flip flopping after she last week claimed it would require 65,000 new jobs to hit her target.

But the LNP leader’s office hit back, pointing to the latest Queensland jobless figures, which showed it had worsened since Ms Frecklington initially unveiled her 5 per cent goal.

Adept Economics director Gene Tunny, who worked as a public servant in the Beattie Government’s employment taskforce, said it typically took several years for unemployment to return a more natural rate following a recession.

“It sounds like (Ms Frecklington’s) just worked out how many additional jobs you’d need to reduce the current amount of unemployment enough to get a 5 per cent unemployment rate,” he said.

“That’s not exactly how things work.

“The challenge is that the labour force is always growing, because you’ve got new people entering the labour force.”

Ms Tunny said it was “courageous” for a politician to promise to reduce the unemployment rate to a certain level, pointing out that the actual impact of the state government was smaller than the federal.

“It’s plausible that it could get down to 5 per cent again at some stage in the future, particularly if we have another mining boom,” he said.

“But at the moment, I think what we’d be expecting is that it would take several years for unemployment to fall back to where it was previously.”

Queensland has the worst unemployment rate in the country – even behind Victoria – with the latest figures showing the Sunshine State’s jobless rate hit 7.7 per cent in September.

Meanwhile, LNP treasury spokesman Tim Mander committed to handing down his party’s costings by Thursday next week, saying they had “nothing to hide”.

“It’s just regular practice,” he said.

“Of course we can’t release all of the costings when we haven’t made all of the announcements.”