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

As usual the Leader of the Opposition is twisting things, talking down the Australian economy and twisting things. The one thing he has not gone to, that he did not want people to hear or know, is that the report he refers to deals with questions like the strength of the Australian dollar. Of course, the strength of the Australian dollar is bringing a transformation to our economy. It is a reflection of the strength of mining and the resources boom and in that sense, because we welcome the investment of the resources boom, we welcome the jobs, we welcome the opportunity for prosperity and we welcome sharing it around the nation. A high Australian dollar is a good thing. It also means in the eyes of the world that everything we earn and everything we own is worth more than it was before, and many Australians are benefiting from that by going overseas—some of them for the first time—because of the strength of the Australian dollar. But at the same time the strength of the Australian dollar is bringing changes to our economy, a patchwork effect in our economy, and the Leader of the Opposition has refused to indicate that factor in his question to me, preferring instead to continue his relentless fear campaign on carbon pricing.

Despite the Leader of the Opposition's relentlessly campaign, the facts cannot be denied, and the facts are that the fundamentals of our economy are strong—unemployment is low, the inflation rate is within the Reserve Bank's band and we have strong public finances. We have an economy that is the envy of the world. We will continue to nurture this economy and grow this economy in the interests of working people, by continuing our investments in infrastructure, roads, rail, ports and the National Broadband Network; by continuing our investments in skills, now at almost double what we inherited from the neglect of those opposite, including the Leader of the Opposition; by ensuring that we cut red tape, working with the business community and through a productive process through the Council of Australian Governments; by continuing to work hard to keep our economy strong so that Australians have got the benefits of jobs.

The problem for the Leader of the Opposition is that every time he raises his voice and asks people to cry out in fear, he thumps his head into an inconvenient fact, and that thumping will be at its loudest on 1 July when the recklessly fear campaigns of closed-down industries, towns wiped off the map, astronomical price increases and power increases of 30 per cent are shown to be the untruths they always were. (Time expired)

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