Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will acknowledge that five minutes before the election was called the previous government did announce the allocation of a licence. It was achieved not so much from my own efforts but from the fact that there were 17,000 local people who had been lobbying and signing petitions to say that they thought that that service was critically important. The medical arguments for it outweighed any of the political posturing, as we knew they would eventually. It is a good initiative and I am pleased that it is now operating at the hospital.

The other big issue that is critically important to me and that I am focused on working on over the term of this government is youth unemployment. We get into a bit of a debate sometimes about the actual figures. As we know, with statistics people can argue one way or the other as to which ones should or should not be used. But there is no doubt that if you look at the highest youth unemployment areas they tend to be coastal areas. It is probably for a whole lot of reasons but particularly to do with teenagers finding it much more difficult to travel for work. In our area we have an unsustainably high teenage unemployment rate. There has been very good work done on that by a local task force. I understand that they are to put a report out very soon. That particular task force report is going to provide us with some solid, well-researched background on where we might make a significant difference on teenage unemployment over the next three years. I want to acknowledge the financial contribution of BlueScope Steel and the University of Wollongong in making that research possible. I think we will all find it very valuable in policy formation. I thank the House for the opportunity to reply to the address of the Governor-General.

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