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

I thank the member for Groom for his question and acknowledge his experience as an engineer, a volunteer firefighter and someone who is a strong advocate for inland rail and the benefits that provides. Australia has had one of the strongest economic recoveries through this pandemic. We've seen a stronger recovery here than in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Japan.

Today we got the September quarter national accounts, and they did show a contraction of 1.9 per cent in the September quarter, as our two largest states, New South Wales and Victoria, were in lockdown. But growth is up 3.9 per cent through the year. We saw that in New South Wales it contracted by 6½ per cent; in the ACT, 1.6 per cent; and, in Victoria, 1.4 per cent. None of this was a surprise, because 13 million of our fellow Australians were in lockdown.

The good news is that those delta lockdowns are now behind us. We've seen an easing of restrictions across New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. Since the start of September, 350,000 jobs have come back. We saw in the retail trade numbers for October a 4.9 per cent increase. We've heard from retailers that they've started to see their customers come back, and with the Black Friday sales they say that more than $5 billion was spent—a 50 per cent increase on the previous year.

So too it is with investment intentions. The latest ABS CAPEX survey showed that investment intentions for non-mining investment were the strongest on record, with an expectation that more than $100 billion would be spent this year, supported by incentives that we have provided in consecutive budgets.

I am asked about alternative approaches. We know that, this week, the Labor leader will not stand up—

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