Ms BAILEY —I direct my question to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister inform the House of the latest ABS figures on the labour force? How has the government achieved its goal of reducing unemployment? What action is the government taking to reduce the level of unemployment even further? Is the Prime Minister aware of any alternative policies in this area?

Mr HOWARD (Prime Minister) —I am very pleased to inform the House that the ABS data released this morning showed that Australia's rate of unemployment has fallen to 6.7 per cent. That is the lowest level of unemployment that this country has had since June 1990. It contrasts with, for example, a level of 11.2 per cent when the Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Employment, Education and Training. The current unemployment rate of 6.7 per cent compares with a rate of 7.5 per cent prevailing in January 1999. Furthermore, in the first 11 months of 1999 and with one month's data to come, a total of 195,000 new jobs have been created. The total job creation under the coalition government now stands at 568,000. There is no economic indicator of which the members of the coalition are more proud than the fact that under this government in less than four years we have created 568,000 new jobs. This is a product of strong economic growth, an excellent productivity performance, budget surpluses, low inflation and low interest rates. All of those things have contributed to this outstanding performance.

While welcoming the fall in national unemployment, I recognise that unemployment rates vary very considerably across the country. Parts of Sydney now have unemployment rates at or below two per cent; the Northern Territory, 3.5 per cent; and the Darling Downs area of Queensland, four per cent. By contrast, in regions such as Wide Bay-Burnett, Western Adelaide, the Richmond-Tweed and the Mersey-Lisle in Tasmania, the unemployment rate is still unacceptably high at above 10 per cent. That highlights the need for both sides of politics to get behind further policy to further reduce unemployment.

I can say, speaking for this side of politics, that we do have policies to further reduce unemployment, but I can find no policies on the other side. As it is with the GST, so it is with the labour market. The Leader of the Opposition, the nowhere man, is bereft of any policy alternatives. He has had almost four years now to generate an alternative, and all he has done is to obstruct and oppose virtually every attempt made by the coalition government to reduce unemployment. He ought to take a leaf out of the book of somebody that I thought he might have been philosophically a little closer to than perhaps some of his critics from the centre right here in Australia. I refer in particular to Gene Sperling, who is a principal economic adviser to President Clinton—hardly, I might say, a darling of the far right or even the centre right in American politics. In an analysis of Sperling's advice and attitudes on economic policy to Clinton, an author had this to say:

Sperling saw that lower deficits, by sparking private investment, did more for the disadvantaged than he and others on the left had imagined. Lower interest rates and steady expansion forced businesses to reach into the fringes of the labour market, bringing the unskilled into the work force and training them more effectively than any government program could possibly do.

They are the words of somebody who is an adviser to the centre left of politics in the United States. It recognises the conventional wisdom, which is now shared by both parts of the political divide in many countries, that what you need if you are going to reduce unemployment is policies that encourage economic growth, encourage investment and encourage business risk taking. You need programs that are going to boost the business sector in order to drive unemployment down. The Leader of the Opposition interjects that the only reason this has fallen is because of the participation rate. It is true that the participation rate has not risen in line with the growth in the economy as much as many may have expected. But one of the reasons why the participation rate has declined is that, because interest rates are now lower as a result of other government policy, there is not the same economic pressure on families to be two-income families.

If you look at the graph of the participation rate in earlier periods when unemployment has fallen and there has been economic growth, you get a completely different pattern. This is a very good figure, but it is not a cause for complacency or a suggestion to this government—and nor do we take it as such—that it has in any way finished the job on unemployment. There are still too many Australians out of work, but at least we have made solid progress. We have generated 570,000 jobs, we have had policies and we have had the courage of our policy commitment. In contrast, after four years the Labor Party is bereft of an alternative and bereft of any capacity to tackle the problem of unemployment in this country and, day by day, it denies the interests of the unemployed whom it claims to represent in this place.