Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kennedy for his sentiment and for his question. I can inform him that, when it comes to energy, this side of the House is taking action that is driving people's power bills down; those opposite will send them up. We are implementing the ACCC's recommendations to create a default offer, which I can tell the member for Kennedy will see a household save up to $400 and will see a business save up to $1,400. The member for Hume is busy implementing the ACCC's recommendations, creating new generation to support those industrial customers. So the actions that we are taking on this side of the House are driving prices down, as we have seen from 1 July this year in Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales. When the Labor Party was last in office, prices doubled.

When it comes to housing, we are taking action to improve the affordability of housing, and we have seen that the prices have come off in the key markets of Sydney and Melbourne, moving to a more sustainable footing. We have seen more supply, more targeted measures around foreign ownership and stronger protections in terms of investor loans. When you talk about manufacturing, the national accounts show that we're actually seeing good growth in the manufacturing sector—3.3 per cent up through the year. A total of 61,000 jobs were created in the manufacturing sector in the last year. That compares to those opposite—when they were last in government, they lost 150,000 jobs from manufacturing. They pretend to look after the blue-collar workers, but they sold them out, and jobs went as a result. When it comes to jobs overall, as the August numbers today show, there are 44,000 new jobs. The numbers confirm that younger people are going into the workforce in greater numbers than ever before. More than 100,000 young people are getting a job.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

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