David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unemployment is a curse on any society and, as you know, we have a lot of initiatives in place to try to address this recurring problem. To give some recent statistics from the Coffs-Grafton employment statistics area, I am very pleased to say that the unemployment rate in February this year was 10.4 per cent and by March it had dropped to 7.3 per cent. These figures are in the minister's area. In our area, in the electorate of Lyne, just below Cowper, the unemployment rate should be helped by a jobs drive we undertook with Job Service providers, when more than 320 jobs were flushed out of the system and are now out there being advertised. Hopefully we will see a similar drop in statistics. My question for Minister Hartsuyker is: what initiatives have we got in the recent budget to help mature-age workers to gain employment?

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