Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The challenge in implementing the government’s orthodoxy, which is to maintain a budget surplus across the economic cycle—something we said before the election campaign, during the election campaign, subsequent to the election campaign—applies to the immediate challenges we face in the current state of the economic cycle. That is something that the member for Higgins, in his more honest of private reflections, would agree with. Therefore, we have a strategy for dealing with the challenges presented by the global financial crisis. It is called economic stimulus to support families and jobs. I would reiterate what the Treasurer said just a moment ago: when it comes to the challenge of supporting families and jobs in the global financial crisis, at the end of the day the Liberal Party never put jobs first. They did not put jobs first with Work Choices. When it comes to the choices we face in dealing with the global financial crisis, they put jobs last as well. We stand by an economic stimulus strategy. It is the right thing for the nation, the right thing for the economy and the right thing for jobs.

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