Premier Jay Weatherill insists more jobs are being created than lost as South Australia endures the highest unemployment rate in the nation, but concedes there are not many new opportunities for “blokes”.
On Adelaide radio this morning to talk about the impending closure of Alinta operations in Leigh Creek and Port Augusta, Weatherill said the economy was “in a time of very dramatic change” but that public attention focussed on “the very high profile jobs that are being lost”.
“We’re seeing a lot of destruction of jobs in the economy, there’s no doubt about that,” he said.
“(But) even with all of these job losses that we’ve seen announced the SA economy has actually had more jobs in it every month over the last six months … so in other words, we’ve created more jobs in the SA economy than the ones we’ve lost.
“The thing is that we’re just not growing fast enough to meet the growing size of our workforce.”
Responding to a male talkback caller who asked for evidence of new job creation, Weatherill said there were employment opportunities in “the health and health services sector, the food manufacturing sector, professional and technical services, tourism and international students”. However, he told the caller: “If you’re a bloke I’ve got to say you wouldn’t have seen that many jobs because a lot of the growth has been in occupations that have been traditionally female dominated, a lot of part-time work.”
“It is a different picture than we’ve seen perhaps in the past,” he said.
“What we do know is that blue-collar workers, in particular male blue-collar workers, are really getting hit hard by this current change in the economy … so I don’t doubt that you and some of your mates would be experiencing some pretty tough times.”
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall told ABC 891 the Premier’s political response “could be summarised in ‘whistle a happy tune’”.
“You just want people to think that we’re swimming along in this wonderful economy … it’s not true,” he said.
“There are 71,000 unemployed people in SA… The Premier seems to think that we’re swimming along strongly at the moment, but the reality is that our economy is in absolute freefall.”
But Weatherill said Marshall hadn’t “read the memo” from new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, “who’s actually talking up the nation about what are the possibilities of the future”.
“He’s talking about the new economy, he’s talking about high-tech jobs, he’s talking about the possibilities for SA and we have an Opposition Leader who’s actually stuck in old time back with Tony Abbott talking down the South Australian economy,” said Weatherill.
The Premier said while he couldn’t “foresee what large companies decide to do with their future operations… I don’t anticipate any other major industrial operations that will be making announcements” of significant job losses.
However, he warned, “we’ve still got to consume the Holden closure, so that’s obviously a very bad and very significant proposition on the horizon”.
