Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Edwards for that question. Our economy is in transition from resource investment in construction driven growth to broader drivers of growth and economic activity. While self-evidently we are facing some challenges and global economic headwinds as we are working through that transition, the Australian economy continues to perform comparatively well. Economic growth, of course, for the most recently reported quarter came in at 0.9 per cent, one of the highest quarterly growth rates in the developed world. We are in our 25th year of continuous growth, with 2.5 per cent growth over the most recent 12-month period, which is of course above the OECD average. More than 300,000 new jobs were created in the Australian economy over the past 12 months. Our unemployment rate, at 5.8 per cent, is well below the OECD average of 6.5 per cent and, of course, below what was previously anticipated for our economy.

These things do not happen by accident. Yes, our floating exchange rate helps. Yes, our record low investment rates help. Yes, of course, the significant increases in export volumes on the back of increased capital investment in recent years have helped cushion the effect of significant falls in price for our key commodity exports. But on top of that the government have worked and continue to work to implement and pursue policies which deliver stronger growth and more jobs: our ambitious innovation agenda, our ambitious deregulation agenda, our ambitious free trade agenda, our ambitious infrastructure investment program, our work to make the tax system more growth friendly, which continues, and, on top of that, our work to get the budget back into balance by controlling public expenditure and improving the quality of our public expenditure.