Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Hogg for the question, because what it highlights is that there is plenty of employment going around with an historic low unemployment level of 4.6 per cent. With 30-year low—generational low—unemployment you would anticipate that people were only just filling in their day’s work, but in fact they are doing more than that. If we accept the honourable senator’s figures, what they show is that with an unemployment rate of 4.6 per cent people are working very long hours as well because of the huge amount of work that is being generated in the Australian economy.

That is juxtaposed to that which happened under the former Labor government, when untold human misery was occasioned to the families of this country when one million of our fellow Australians were on the scrapheap of unemployment. That is when mums and dads had problems making ends meet. They could not pay the mortgages. Why? There was unemployment and high inflation. Not so at the moment. There is now low inflation and ever-increasing wages above and beyond the inflation rate.