Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The fact is that at the moment the Australian economy is quite obviously going through the transition where the mining production phase is stepping into the place of the mining investment and construction phase. Export volumes have increased significantly, but prices have come down much faster than expected. And the answer is that we have got to continue with our economic action strategy to strengthen the Australian economy.

One of the best indicators of how important our reform agenda has been is the fact that we got rid of the carbon tax in the first two weeks of this quarter, and you can see what it meant for growth in the quarter; you can see how important it was to lower energy prices for everyday Australians but also to lower energy prices for Australian businesses, because the Australian dollar has been stubbornly high for too long and that has meant that we have not been able to cushion the impact of falling terms of trade in a way that we would have expected.

Having said all of that, moving forward we are absolutely determined to continue with our plan to build the infrastructure that needs to be built to make the Australian economy more productive and more successful. Ultimately, 2015 will be better than this year, and the years beyond that will be better again.

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