Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Hear, hear—too right! We always welcome the creation of jobs on this side of the House. On this side of the House, it goes to the very core of our being. We welcome the creation of 28,600 new jobs in January, with the unemployment rate falling to 4.1 per cent. As I said yesterday, we are very optimistic about the future of the Australian economy. We recognise that unemployment is low and that we are in our 17th straight year of growth. But we also have very substantial challenges, because we are in the midst of a terms of trade boom, which has been delivering the wealth creation and the jobs of recent years. The challenge that we have as a nation is to prepare for the future, to meet the challenges that flow from that terms of trade boom, because the labour market is tight. It is the tightest it has been in a generation.

See this speech in context