Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Canberra for her very important question because, as I outlined to the House yesterday, the global economy does face some substantial challenges and, thankfully, our economy is one of the strongest in the developed world. You can see this in the pipeline of investment in resources—the $430 billion that has been outlined by ABARES. Of course, we have a debt position which is the envy of the developed world. We have low unemployment. When the global financial crisis hit, our unemploy­ment rate was the same level as the United States. Now theirs is twice ours, with unemployment here at 4.9 per cent. Today we have seen the Labor force figures, which show unemployment again at 4.9 per cent. Something like 23,000 jobs have been created in the past month of June, with strong growth in full employment—something which is celebrated and supported by everybody on this side of the House. Of course, this adds to the 750,000 jobs that have been created and the 222,000 jobs created in the past year. One of the reasons why employment is so strong in this country is that this government got the big economic decisions right. We acted at the height of the global financial crisis and the global recession to support our economy. But that is not the only reason why our economy is strong compared to other developed economies. We have also over a 25-year period put in place the really big economic reforms, and that adds to our economic strength compared to the economic strength, or lack thereof, of so many other developed economies.

You would have to ask the question: where would Australia be now if we had not put in place a great reform like compulsory superannuation, which was opposed by those on that side of the House? Where would we be if the government of the day then had caved in to the fear campaign that was being run against that great reform?

See this speech in context