Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Corangamite for his question. I know that he would have followed today’s news that the unemployment number for last month, the month of February, remained effectively steady at 5.3 per cent, in line with market expectations. This unemployment number obviously indicates that our economy has done far better than many would have expected at the start of the global financial crisis and global recession, the worst global recession in more than 75 years. These figures show that our economy has outperformed virtually every other advanced economy during the global recession. We know that this performance would not have been as strong if it had not been for the quick and decisive action of this government in investing in our economy and supporting Australian jobs. Without that quick and decisive action, hundreds of thousands more Australians would have been unemployed. This action has helped give Australian families certainty during very uncertain times.

But, whilst today’s figures are encouraging, they remind us that there is nothing that should be taken for granted. There are 128,000 Australians who have become unemployed since the global financial crisis hit in September 2008. What these unemployment figures are telling us and what we know from around the nation is that many working families face significant pressures and uncertainties as they seek to build a future for themselves. That is why the government is so determined to continue to invest in nation-building infrastructure to stimulate local economies and to support jobs, and it is why our reforms are well designed and costed, because we believe in providing certainty and support for working families around the country.

This is a stark contrast to the attitude of the opposition, which is not focused on building the nation; it is focused on saying no to absolutely everything—no to economic stimulus to support the jobs of working Australians; no to the Fair Work Act, because it would rather go back to Work Choices; and then this week we have seen a debate break out about the opposition acting to deny working parents paid parental leave. We know that the risk to paid parental leave in this parliament is the Leader of the Opposition, who is shaping up to block the bill to deliver paid parental leave. Out of his own mouth, the Leader of the Opposition has said, ‘We’ll be amending it to try and make it our scheme’—his scheme being one that would put cost of living pressures on working families because it would put up the price of bread and milk and the basic groceries that they rely on. I thank the members of the opposition backbench who are nodding their heads in agreement because they understand that.

The Leader of the Opposition is a risk to the budgets of working families. This is a man that the former Treasurer Peter Costello viewed as being such a risk to the economy that he would not even have trusted him to be his deputy. No doubt the former Treasurer Peter Costello formed that view because, when the Leader of the Opposition was minister for health and he used to be asked about how they were going to fund health policies, he would just shrug his shoulders and say: ‘Peter will provide. He always does.’ Well, Peter has gone now and, with Peter gone, the Leader of the Opposition is looking to put these burdens directly onto working families to fund his hastily cobbled together schemes. When I say ‘hastily cobbled together’, no-one in the Liberal Party knew about it. You really have to try hard to make the member for Wentworth look like a model of inclusiveness and consultation, but that is what the Leader of the Opposition—

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