Friday, 11 March 2011

Queensland loses 22,186 jobs

Employment figures just released show a grave situation in Queensland in the aftermath of floods and the recent cyclone.

Labor Force statistics shows Queensland lost 22,186 jobs in February, and had the second highest unemployment rate of any State (seasonally adjusted).

All the jobs lost were part-time jobs. Queensland’s unemployment rate remained steady at 5.6% due to a fall in numbers of those seeking work.

However State Treasurer Andrew Fraser quoting NAB’s February business survey, which some commentators had attributed to a surge of disaster relief in Queensland. The opposition says Queensland has for a long time had some of the weakest business trading conditions in the nation.

In 2009 Labor's election promise for 100,000 new jobs is far from its goal, with only 30,884 full-time jobs created. There are 20,929 more Queenslanders who are unemployed now than there were at the last state election, with unemployment rising from 4.9% to 5.6%.

Over this same period there are higher taxes and charges, including power, water and fuel bills, licence fees and the highest vehicle registration charges in Australia.

The State opposition says the taxes and charges are a direct result of Labor’s debt and deficit policy which is killing employment opportunities in Queensland.

“An LNP government will be a friend not a foe to Queensland businesses and households," Shadow Treasurer Tim Nicholls says. "If the Labor government are serious about job creation, they will ‘get a move on’ and distribute flood and cyclone reconstruction funds as quickly as possible, not only to rebuild our towns and cities, but to also keep Queenslanders in jobs."

1 comment:

James Crawford said...

This talk of Airport expansion is not a new thing, it comes up every 5 - 8 years. This is the 3rd time in 16 years I have heard about and seen the documents about it.

The document in question is the Draft Land Use Plan
(under Corporate on the right hand side and Land Use Plan.
I've attached the document, but it probably won't work as it is too large.
I have put the document in two sections on the Files section of the Cairns Coev Yahoo home page.

The consultation period was open from 15 Dec to 25 Feb.

It is important people are concerned and make their objections known.

However, people need to understand this is a Land Use Plan, a requirement under legislation that the operators of the Airport provide to Government.

A Land Use Plan does not mean that plans to destroy mangroves, build another runway etc have been submitted and are about to happen.

It would be good to see the mangroves protected under the land use plan and not considered to be a possible site for a possible future second runway.

I view the Mangroves almost every morning on my walk to the Barron River and would hate to see them go, but I am also aware that the only reason those Mangroves still exist is because the Airport is there. If the Airport was not there these Mangroves would have been cleared years ago for developments.

Currently Cairns airport does not have nearly enough air traffic to require a second runway, until we have planes landing every minute there won't be a need. The current runway is underutilized and so, although the Cairns Airport P/L may put out a document that mentions a second runway, I for one am not at all concerned at this time. The Cairns Airport P/L like any other corporation is trying to sell itself, to make it more profitable and to increase its return to investors. So, there is no reason for the airport to spend 100s of millions of dollars they don't have on expanding an airport until such time as it is profitable to do so and that time will be when the airport has passed its current capacity and that's a long way off.

I do not want to see the airport expanded, so don't get up me. I want the Mangroves protected under the Land Use Plan. But I also would like people to be realistic and be aware that apart from the Land Use Plan, there are no firm plans or applications in place to build a second runway.