Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, how will the government continue to keep the nation's economy strong, protect jobs and undertake the reforms we need for the future?

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

I thank the member for La Trobe for her question. It is an incredibly important question for Australian families, one that we should be focused on in this parliament today, particularly following the International Monetary Fund report overnight. Our economy, as we meet today, is an economy that is the envy of the world. We are in this state because the Australian people worked together with the government to protect and save jobs during the global financial crisis. The government acted to provide economic stimulus, but the Australian people responded. Employers around the country, big and small, responded to keep people in jobs. Trade unions around the country responded to work with employers to do what was necessary, including short-time arrangements, to keep people in jobs. The government worked with employers and trade unions to keep young Australians in apprenticeships. This is why during all of this global economic turbulence we did not have a recession. We supported the jobs of 200,000 Australians and we kept young Australians in apprenticeships so our economy did not experience the destruction of skills, which comes with young people losing an opportunity for an apprenticeship or having their apprenticeship terminated before completion, and so all those young Australians could have the ticket that makes a difference for a better start in life. Today we should be celebrating the fact that the Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister has been named as Euromoney's Finance Minister of the Year 2011—something to be celebrated. It is an award for the Deputy Prime Minister but really an award for our nation, for what we have achieved by working together. This is only the second time an Australian has won this prestigious award in its 29-year history. Of course, the other winner of this prestigious award was Paul Keating, another great Labor Treasurer. I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister because he views this as an award for the nation and an award for the economy that we have built together.

We will continue to build that economy together and to strengthen it for the future—a future with clean energy; a future with high skills; a future with new technology and infrastructure, like the National Broadband Network; a future with strengthened traditional infrastructure like ports, roads and rail; a future that contains a manufacturing industry still working with vibrancy; a future with a tourism sector and an international education sector which are still working despite the pressures of a strong Australian dollar; and, of course, a future and an economy with a resources sector that is powering ahead with hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the pipeline.

What makes the Deputy Prime Minister's achievement so remarkable is that he has achieved it day after day after day against the relentless negativity of the opposition and a Leader of the Opposition who slept through the global financial crisis and slept through the important piece of legislation to support Australian jobs. We will always be acting to support Australian jobs and prosperity, no matter what negativity the Leader of the Opposition chooses to pursue.