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

The backdrop to this is, in December, the sharpest contraction in global demand seen in the history of the modern market economy. In other countries around the world, what you saw were substantial falls in retail sales. If you go through them, in the US retail sales fell by 2.7 per cent in the month of December, in Japan sales fell by two per cent in December, in Germany they fell by 1.2 per cent and in the UK they fell by one per cent.

It is also instructive to look at the data as to where the sales were biggest or where they increased the most, because there is this allegation from the other side that Australian families are out there wasting it; that is the implication of what they are saying. Let us just look at where it was spent: department stores had an increase of 8.3 per cent; clothing, 5.8 per cent—

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