Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure where the Liberal opposition have been in terms of analysing the budget, but what is clear is that the budget has focused on bringing us back into the black three years earlier than expected under the last budget. The whole focus of the budget is to reduce debt and to take advantage of the fact that our economy is recovering much quicker than other economies because this government invested during the global financial crisis. We acted early, and by acting early we protected Australian jobs. The great result from this budget is the projection that unemployment will fall to, I think, 4¾ per cent over earlier projections of it being around eight per cent. That is a great result because it means more Australians are in jobs. If we had not put the fiscal stimulus in place, thousands more Australians would have been out of work. (Time expired)