Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Treasurer. What do the latest economic indicators reveal about the strength of the Australian economy? How important is experienced economic management to its prospects?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for La Trobe for his question. I can inform him that the NAB quarterly business survey, which was released today, shows that business conditions improved solidly in the December quarter and expectations for the March quarter rose. That comes on the back of retail trade figures, released yesterday, showing that retail trade rose 1.3 per cent in the December quarter and was 4.3 per cent higher over the year. But, importantly, the consumer price index remains very restrained. It actually fell in the last quarter by 0.1 per cent. To a degree that was abstracting from things like petrol prices and bananas. When we leave out the volatile items the underlying inflation rate was about 0.5 per cent. But 0.5 per cent is a step down from the 0.8/0.9 we were getting in the last quarter in underlying terms and it shows that inflation is moderate. In addition to that, jobs creation in the Australian economy has been very strong, with jobs being created at the rate of about 20,000 per month in the last half of last year.

Notwithstanding all that, there are still challenges for the Australian economy: the challenges of drought; the challenge of adjustment in the property market; the challenge of rising energy prices; the challenge of unfunded liabilities; and, the greatest challenge of all, the ageing of the population. These challenges will require experienced economic management. I see that the opposition also believes that experienced economic management is important. Apparently in a bid to boost their credentials on experienced management, the Labor Party is actively looking at luring John Brumby, the Victorian Treasurer, to Canberra. ALP figures say that Mr Brumby would boost federal Labor’s credentials. That is probably right, actually. Mr Brumby was a member of this House between 1983 and 1990. There is the prospect that Mr Brumby would go back into his seat of Bendigo.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you trying to undermine Ted Baillieu?

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne is warned!

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When it was put to the member for Bendigo that Mr Brumby would not only boost Labor’s economic credentials but also boost the calibre of Labor’s candidate in Bendigo, the member for Bendigo said that, if he were to become Treasurer or finance minister in a Rudd government, Mr Brumby ‘deserves to be welcomed into a seat where he is not having to constantly worry about constituents’ problems’. That is how important Mr Gibbons, the member for Bendigo, thinks constituents’ problems are. The member for Bendigo thought that Mr Brumby ought to go into the seat of Scullin and take the place of Harry Jenkins, about which Harry Jenkins had a view that he had not gone through a preselection to pass the seat of Scullin across to Mr Brumby. The one thing that neither the member for Scullin nor the member for Bendigo said was that there was no need to get a new face up here to boost Labor’s economic credentials. Nobody would consider it unimportant to have a new spokesman on the economy up here. That is why the member for Lilley should be watching his back very, very carefully.