Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

He is commonly referred to as Jones! There are actually some serious commentators out there in the business community who know the importance of that package to their businesses, to their profit lines and to their capacity to keep their doors open and people employed in the difficult months ahead. My attention has been drawn to a comment by Gerry Harvey about the situation he confronts. These are difficult times for all retailers. He is clearly one of the retailers who will have to look hard at their bottom lines. In the last 24 hours he has said that he supports the government’s $10.4 billion fiscal stimulus package and that he believes the government was probably doing a pretty good job on it. He is at the sharp end of this. The retail sector is facing a pretty bleak Christmas. Had it not been for the Commonwealth government’s initiative, had it not been for Labor’s stimulus package, we would be now confronting a much worse situation.

The fact that we are not has been recognised globally. It may not be recognised by Liberal and National members of the parliament, who struggle daily to find some issue to attack us with, but it has been recognised widely. We are all aware of the OECD report published overnight that identifies Australia as one of the very few countries in the OECD not forecast to go into recession. Indeed, it forecasts the growth rate in Australia to drop down to about 1.7 per cent and to then rise the year after. That is a very significant achievement. Whenever we talk about that achievement, those opposite immediately say, ‘That’s only because we were in government before.’

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