Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Acting Prime Minister. I remind him of over 2,000 jobs lost at BlueScope, OneSteel and Qantas, companies that face a combined carbon tax bill of over $400 million a year and rising. Will the Acting Prime Minister guarantee that not a single job has been lost or will be lost through the introduction of the world's biggest carbon tax, a bad tax based on a lie?

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The last part of the question was out of order. The Acting Prime Minister has the call.

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

What I can say is this: after the introduction of a carbon price, our economy will continue to grow, and grow strongly. We will continue to generate income. We will grow strongly. If you look at where we have been in the last few years and where we can go, we have been in a position where we have been growing unlike any other developed economy. In the next two years we are going to outperform every other major developed economy, and everyone on this side of the House is proud of our job creation record. Over 800,000 jobs have been created in this country—in the past year something like 90,000 jobs. On the Thursday after the budget, we had the Bureau of Statistics figures, which showed that unemployment in Australia was at 4.9 per cent. That is something we are proud of as well.

But we also understand that our economy does face great structural changes and that there are people who do unfortunately lose their jobs. We should give them our full support. Those workers that have lost their jobs at Qantas should receive the full support of Qantas and should receive their entitlement to whatever benefits and support can come from the government, and we will do our utmost to help each and every one of them.

But for those on that side of the House to maintain that these job losses are somehow the result of the introduction of a carbon price shows how dishonest those opposite are—completely dishonest with their scare campaign. They have no shame, because this is the crew that would not stand up for the Australian workforce at the height of the global financial crisis, when they came into this House and the Leader of the Opposition slept through the critical vote to save Australia, to save Australian small businesses and to support our employment. The Liberal Party were missing in action.

This government provides an enormous amount of support to ensure that our economy continues to grow. We are investing in the productive side of our economy. We are doing everything we possibly can to set our economy up for the future. Putting in place carbon pricing reform is just as important a reform as bringing down the tariff wall, the introduction of national superannuation and the introduction of enterprise bargaining. We are doing this because we are all about jobs. Jobs are the No. 1 priority of every member on this side of the House, and they will continue to be our priority. We will not shirk the hard decisions. We will support the Australian workforce every day of the week.