Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on today’s employment numbers and the government’s plans to continue to support employment growth?

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to tell the House about today’s employment figures. Today’s labour force figures show there are more people in work and more people looking for work. These figures are quite good. They show that in the month of January, which of course had the natural disasters—the Queensland floods and now the cyclones—that our economy created an additional 24,000 jobs. That builds on the creation of 364,000 jobs in 2010. That is the biggest calendar-year increase in our history. It is something that the parliament ought to be proud of—to have had this employment outcome given the global economic conditions that we have seen in the last couple of years in this country. This government always puts jobs first and always puts the community first.

We have seen an unemployment rate of five per cent. We have seen a slight increase in the participation rate to 65.9 per cent. This figure, more than anything else, confirms the fundamental strength of the Australian economy. Yes, there has been an impact in Queensland. There is no doubt about that. And even in these figures you can see that hours worked were down in Queensland and there has been an impact. But what Australians can have faith in is the fact that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. And on top of that, we have got a very strong investment pipeline—ABARE estimates $380 billion in resources alone. And we are returning to surplus faster than any major advanced economy. I think the Australian people are proud of these figures. We have bounced back before, as we did during the global recession, and we will bounce back from the impacts of these natural disasters.

Over the past three years there have been something like 740,000 jobs created in Australia and, during that period, something like 30 million jobs were shed elsewhere in the world. This government took the tough decisions during the global financial crisis to stimulate our economy, to support jobs, to support small business, to support tradies and to keep our communities strong. And just as we did that during the global crisis, we are doing it through these natural disasters—taking the right decisions for Australia, keeping our public finances strong, but providing the necessary resources that are required to rebuild communities. We certainly do not underestimate the scale of the task before us, and that is why we moved so quickly to make the savings in the budget and put in place a modest levy.

And through all of that we have been opposed by the Leader of the Opposition. He opposed everything we did to protect our communities during the global financial crisis. If he had had his way, this economy would have gone into recession. And now he is opposing our plans to rebuild Queensland, to get the appropriate resources in the right place to help those shattered communities rebuild. Nothing could be more important to the peace of mind of those communities than to know that the government has a responsible plan which can be funded. Of course, as usual the Leader of the Opposition puts his political interests ahead of the national interest. It would have been easy for us to say: ‘She’ll be right. We won’t do anything about this. We won’t put a levy in place. We’ll fudge it like the opposition always does.’ But this government is doing the right thing by Australia, the right thing by our economy and the right thing for those communities.