Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Little wonder there is an intervention. They do not like to hear what we are doing for the economy; they do not like to hear how Australia has come out of the global financial crisis in the best position of any country in the world. We have the highest growth, we have one of the lowest unemployment levels and we have the lowest debt and deficit. This budget confirmed that Australia would be back in surplus within three years—three years ahead of where we were last year—and that is because this government has made the tough economic decisions and has been able to guide the Australian economy through the most difficult international economic circumstances that any government in Australia has had to deal with since the Great Depression.

We want to talk about the budget, we want to talk about the positive things that we have both done for the Australian economy and are planning to do for the Australian economy to make sure that ordinary Australians are better off than they were—in stark contrast to the member for Cook, who spent his entire time on a fear and smear campaign that seems to characterise the contributions of those opposite.

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