Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

3,000-plus applications from around the country. Therefore, there will be further rounds which will be sought for expressions of interest from local communities. I would invite the honourable member and other affected local members in this region to work with the priority employment coordinators once they are appointed in terms of working on particular projects which will have effect in their area.

What I would say more broadly about the challenge of unemployment is that, as the global recession has deepened and the recession has inflicted damage on the Australian economy and on the workforce more generally, it underlines again the absolute importance of a Nation Building for Recovery program of the type which the government has outlined in this parliament over the last two weeks and prior to that as well. That provides an additional injection of activity in the economy. Again I emphasise something which the Treasurer correctly put to the House before, which is that in the absence of the government’s action to date—through, firstly, our stimulus payments in October last year; secondly, the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, which was released in February this year; and, thirdly, the measures contained in the budget—the 200,000 jobs that we are providing support for on the back of those investments in the Australian economy for each of the two subsequent years would otherwise be lost. That is a huge number in the overall dimensions of the size of the Australian workforce. Therefore, what we have sought to do on top of that is to provide additional support, in particular areas of intense unemployment activity, through the application of local jobs funds.

I therefore thank the honourable member for his question. I would encourage him, together with the member for New England, the member for Page and the member for Richmond in terms of the particular area we are speaking of—Page, Richmond, Lyne and other affected areas—to work closely with the local employment coordinator and get applications in for what will work locally to try to bring that unemployment rate down a further notch compared with what it would otherwise be, building on the back of the Nation Building for Recovery plan that the government has outlined comprehensively in the parliament.

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