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

The member for North Sydney shakes his head. If you go from 5.2 per cent, Joe, to 10 per cent, let me tell you it adds up to about half a million more people out of work. Now, you might regard that as a mere piece of collateral damage; we on this side of the House do not. We are proud of the fact that we intervened in the economy. We protected this economy. We made sure it did not go into recession. We acted in a way to keep unemployment low. We have done so with the lowest debt and lowest deficit of the major advanced economies and, on top of that, we have emerged with the second-lowest unemployment level of the major advanced economies.

On the final part of the member for North Sydney’s question—which underlines fundamentally how he has failed to engage in the detail of the debate on tax reform, because we know the member for North Sydney is not big on detail—the tax reform proposal put forward by the government is entirely directed towards the reforms of the taxation system for company tax, small business and investment in infrastructure, and associated measures in superannuation. The member for North Sydney knows that to be true. If he bothered to read the budget papers, he would know it has nothing to do with the budget bottom line; it is to do with tax reform.

The government is proud of having intervened to assist the economy to remain out of recession. Many families out there in Australia are still doing it tough and many small businesses are doing it tough, but let me tell you: had those opposite prevailed, with their prescription for sitting on their hands and doing nothing, this country would be in the middle of mass unemployment.

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