John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

to run the booming industries of Queensland.’ Yet at a federal level you have got the Labor Party running around saying there is mass exploitation. It is as plain as the nose on your face that this country at the present time is suffering the consequences of an exuberant, prosperous, high-employment economy. As the Treasurer said the other day, ‘It’s a terrific problem to have.’

For the 32 years that I have been in this place, the holy grail has been to have near full employment, and we have now achieved it. We have a 30-year low in unemployment. We have a situation where we do not face a shortage of jobs; we in fact face a shortage of workers. That is a magnificent problem to have, when I think of the problems we had with high unemployment—when I think back to when the man who asked me this question, the Leader of the Opposition, was the minister for unemployment in the early 1990s. He basically gave up on trying to get unemployment down. He basically said that the problem was beyond him and that really people should stop complaining. I can remember when my predecessor was Prime Minister, when unemployment was 8½ per cent, the Leader of the Opposition went on the John Laws program and said, ‘You’ve never had it so good.’ That was the measure, Mr Speaker. And now, fast forward to 2006 and, gee, do we have a problem! We have the problem that the economy is strong—

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