Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

On the question of confidence both in business and at the consumer level—I will come back to the question of the Ai Group in a minute—the impact of the global financial crisis has been felt across the world. If you look at business confidence indicators and consumer confidence indicators across the world, they have all taken a pummelling.

On the question of employment, as we indicated before, the government projects that the unemployment rate, according to our budget forecasts, will increase to 4.75 per cent by the middle of next year. We also note that employment growth is currently at 2.4 per cent, as of July 2008. The budget forecast is for employment growth to ease to three-quarters of a per cent over the year to June 2009. Also I would say to the honourable member that 33,000 jobs were created in the last two months; 136,000 jobs have been created since November 2007. This is a—

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