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

I thank the member for Fremantle for that very positive question. I notice the laughter on the other side of the House, because they do not appreciate the importance of the investment pipeline in our country. Nor do they appreciate the importance of the strength of our economy. They have absolutely no idea how to manage a $1.5 trillion economy. This government put in place policies to avoid the global financial crisis and to avoid a global recession. The consequence of that is: something like 800,000 Australians are in employment because of the policies that this government has put in place.

What we have seen in our economy is the biggest investment pipeline in our nation's history.

I was talking before about the increase in investment. In our time in office, there has been $919 billion of private business investment. As I was saying before, the investment pipeline in terms of advanced resource projects has increased by $90 billion in the last year alone. Today we have seen environmental approval from the minister for the environment for the Alpha project, which could create up to 3,500 jobs in the mine's construction alone.

These are the facts. These are the cold, hard facts of investment in Australia, and that investment has been taking place in the full knowledge of a price on carbon and an MRRT. We know that the opposition is having a bit of trouble with the facts. We saw the Leader of the Opposition on 7.30 last night, and didn't that one just take the cake! It was the biggest train wreck since his last appearance, where he said you couldn't believe anything that he said; you would have to have it in writing. It was that bad. On 7.30 last night he was claiming that this project was not going ahead because of the carbon price. But when asked by the interviewer whether he had read the statement from BHP, the answer was no, he hadn't. Let's be very clear what BHP has said. This is what BHP has said:

As you know the tax environment for this particular project has not changed at all since we started working on it six or seven years ago.

That was bad enough, but what was really bad was the bold-faced porky he told at his press conference today, where he actually denied that he had said it—denied the very fact that he had not actually read this material. That was just a bold-faced lie at his press conference today.

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