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

As the head of the IMF said yesterday, we are confronted with a global economic recession. A term which he has used to describe it is ‘the great recession’, from which no nation—including Australia—is immune, as reflected in the increase in unemployment in the numbers produced today. From the government’s perspective, the loss of any job in Australia is the loss of one job too many. We do know that, had the government sat back and done nothing and just watched, the unemployment numbers produced today would be much worse.

I also say to the Leader of the Opposition that, while it may not fit his political script, the unemployment numbers across the rest of the world today bear some taking into account. Across the OECD, the 30-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the January unemployment figure was 6.9 per cent. Of the major seven economies in the world—the G7—it was 6.8 per cent, in the European Union it was 7.6 per cent and in the euro area it was 8.2 per cent. If you go to individual economies, the unemployment rate in Canada was 7.2 per cent, in Germany it was 7.3 per cent and in the Irish Republic it was 8.8 per cent. If you turn to other economies, the United Kingdom was 6.3 per cent, as most recently produced, and the United States was 7.6 per cent.

I draw the honourable member’s attention to the fact that this is a global economic recession with implications for economies right across the world. If the honourable member were to pay attention to those individual unemployment numbers from each of the major economies around the world, he would see that Australia’s economic stimulus strategy is having an effect in reducing the overall impact of the global recession on Australia. As I have said to this House on a number of occasions, no government can stop a global economic cyclone from coming across our shores, but a responsible government seeks to reduce the impact of that damage on Australia’s workers, Australian businesses and Australian families. That is the responsible course of action. The alternative course of action is to sit, wait and see, and do nothing. That is what is being recommended by those opposite.

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