John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is also to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on the government's policies to support jobs and growth in the economy? And what has the response been to these economic priorities?

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

I do thank the member for that question, because this morning we had another reminder of the resilience of the Australian economy. We had some comments from Mr Lowe from the Reserve Bank of Australia. He made a number of points which have been made in the House before, but I think it is important that we go through them one by one. He made the point that we have got growth which is close to trend, we have got low unemployment and, of course, we have got low inflation and lower interest rates. He also made the point that the performance of our economy has been far better than most other developed economies. He made the point that we are so well placed to maximise all of the opportunities that are going to come from growth in the region, particularly in the Asian century. He acknowledged how difficult it has been in the global economy and particularly for Australia, given what has occurred within the global economy over the last few years. It is very important to get all of this into perspective, particularly when there are so many people coming into this House and talking down the Australian economy. He said:

… no matter what one's perspective, we should not lose sight of the fact that maintaining overall macro balance through this period of change has been a significant achievement. And it is an achievement that has benefited the entire community.

There is no figure which better demonstrates that than the creation of 900,000 jobs over the past five years. We have had 900,000 jobs created over the past five years because this government has made the right choices at critical times in the development of the global economy.

When the global economy experienced the global financial crisis and the global recession, we decided to support our economy, to support jobs and growth, to support small business. Of course we live with the benefit of that today, because our economy has jobs growth much greater than just about any other developed economy. But the other thing we have done during that five-year period is we have made the essential investments in the future to ensure prosperity for tomorrow, to make sure that we invested in skills and education. We have got to keep doing that because our future is not assured unless we make the investments for the future, which lift our productivity growth—hence the investment that the Prime Minister was talking about today in the early years; hence the school improvement program.

All of these things have to be done in a modern economy—investing in the future, running a responsible budget policy. It is about doing all of these things because we believe in growth and jobs, and that goes to the core of living standards. There is a stark contrast here between this side of the House and the other side of the House. They talk about having a commission of audit. That is a plan that they have got to hide the truth. This is from the Campbell Newman play book. Their approach is not to have their policies costed, to go to the election and hide their plans to slash and burn jobs and growth. We on this of the House stand for jobs and growth. (Time expired)