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

The regrettable thing about the question from the Leader of the Opposition is that it is about as misleading as their negative campaign on debt and deficit. Do you know why? In the negative nature of the question just asked he left out one key factor, and that is the positive number on consumption—because it did not fit the political script he was seeking to advance. What did consumption do in the Australian economy in the quarter just passed? It rose by 0.6 per cent. That is what happened to consumption. Why does the Leader of the Opposition think that that happened? Did it happen because there were pixies at the bottom of the garden? Did it happen because he was pulling things out of space? No. It happened as a deliberate construct of government policy. The government has acted in the economy to boost consumption.

The Leader of the Opposition never likes being confronted with simple facts. The fact is that consumption has been affected in the Australian economy because we acted on the basis of the advice of the Treasury last October to support households, to support pensioners, to support carers and to support veterans by making direct cash payments to them. That was the strategy we took, and it had an effect on the economy in those two quarters most particularly of concern—the fourth quarter last year and the first quarter this year—and into the second quarter this year. Direct cash payments supporting consumption were the best way ahead. The Leader of the Opposition, again, if he was reflecting honestly on what happened with the retail sales figures in the last week or so, would note the fundamental difference between retail sales being up here, by in excess of four per cent—

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