Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

My answer to this question is that everybody around the world, except perhaps the Australian Labor Party, knows that we are facing significant global economic headwinds and that the International Monetary Fund has again downgraded the global economic growth outlook down to three per cent, the lowest since 2008-09. Australia is a globally focused and globally exposed open trading economy. When the global economy weakens, it has a flow-on impact on the Australian economy. There's something else that everybody, except perhaps the Australian Labor Party, knows—that is, that earlier this year we had a significant flood and we continue to have a severe drought in large parts of regional Australia, which is impacting on our domestic economic growth outlook.

But here's another thing. We have a plan to deal with the challenges we're facing. We have a plan to build a stronger, more resilient economy on the back of lower taxes, more infrastructure, lower energy prices and better access to markets around the world for our exporting businesses. At the last election the Australian people had the opportunity to choose between two alternative plans. They were presented with a high-spending, high-taxing plan, which Australians understood would have weakened our economy and led to higher unemployment and lower wages growth, or our plan for a stronger economy, more jobs and better opportunities for Australians to get ahead. Of course we are facing global economic headwinds. Other economies around the world have actually shrunk in the last quarter, in the June quarter: Germany, the United Kingdom, Singapore—and, indeed, if you look at the growth outlook for the G7 economies in the same report, Australia's economic growth outlook is higher than any of those G7 economies other than the United States. (Time expired)