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

What I would say to the Leader of the Opposition is that at a time when there are workers in some sections of the economy who are losing jobs it is incumbent upon us to understand why that is happening and to respond, not to make up reasons in the way that the Leader of the Opposition is making up reasons.

Can I particularly say I was disgusted this morning to see the opposition trying to use job losses at Alcoa to continue its fear campaign on carbon pricing when the CEO of Alcoa made it absolutely clear that this was not to do with carbon pricing. What sort of people would use the distress of working people, on hearing about job losses, for their own political ends? And we saw that done by the opposition this morning. We are in economic times when our economy is strong. We came out of the global financial crisis strong. We came out of it strong because of the way in which we invested in the economy, an investment that was opposed by those opposite, who did not care about jobs then. We saved 200,000 jobs and have unemployment at just over five per cent.

Yes, there is structural change occurring in our economy because of the strength of the Australian dollar and because economic weight is moving into our region, which will drive a different pattern of demand for Australian goods and services. Then there are the structural changes that are necessary to take us to a clean energy future and to get us the best of technology. And where does the Leader of the Opposition sit as we go through this period of change? Opposed to jobs.

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