Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for La Trobe for his question. I can inform him that the NAB quarterly business survey, which was released today, shows that business conditions improved solidly in the December quarter and expectations for the March quarter rose. That comes on the back of retail trade figures, released yesterday, showing that retail trade rose 1.3 per cent in the December quarter and was 4.3 per cent higher over the year. But, importantly, the consumer price index remains very restrained. It actually fell in the last quarter by 0.1 per cent. To a degree that was abstracting from things like petrol prices and bananas. When we leave out the volatile items the underlying inflation rate was about 0.5 per cent. But 0.5 per cent is a step down from the 0.8/0.9 we were getting in the last quarter in underlying terms and it shows that inflation is moderate. In addition to that, jobs creation in the Australian economy has been very strong, with jobs being created at the rate of about 20,000 per month in the last half of last year.

Notwithstanding all that, there are still challenges for the Australian economy: the challenges of drought; the challenge of adjustment in the property market; the challenge of rising energy prices; the challenge of unfunded liabilities; and, the greatest challenge of all, the ageing of the population. These challenges will require experienced economic management. I see that the opposition also believes that experienced economic management is important. Apparently in a bid to boost their credentials on experienced management, the Labor Party is actively looking at luring John Brumby, the Victorian Treasurer, to Canberra. ALP figures say that Mr Brumby would boost federal Labor’s credentials. That is probably right, actually. Mr Brumby was a member of this House between 1983 and 1990. There is the prospect that Mr Brumby would go back into his seat of Bendigo.

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