Editorial Developments Crucial To New Wave Of Jobs
Illawarra Mercury
Monday October 13, 2008
LESS than a week after a damning report into corruption involving Wollongong City Council staff, councillors and developers, it would be easy to demonise developers.
However, there are good reasons to encourage progress - and the developers that come with it - to get to work in our city.Development brings jobs. Not just to construct the physical city that residents want to live in, but businesses that people would like to work in. These jobs are crucial if the region is to turn around the dismal figures published today which show we have some of the highest areas of unemployment in the country.In the top eight Federal seats with the country's highest unemployment figures are Gilmore in second, Throsby in sixth and Cunningham in eighth position.This news comes after a report in June showed the Illawarra had one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in Australia. Envisioning and then building the kind of city residents of the Illawarra deserve could also mean the region loses fewer workers to Sydney.Demographer Bernard Salt said last week that Wollongong needed to assert its identity rather than concentrate on its links to Sydney.We can do that with more jobs - and, importantly, high-quality jobs - and an increase in the number of workers who can build careers in the region.
© 2008 Illawarra Mercury