Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

The fact is the deputy leader of the Liberal Party was saying: ‘There’s not enough women in the Labor frontbench, not enough women in the Labor cabinet.’ There are more women in the Labor cabinet than there are in the shadow cabinet. I can see the member for Moncrieff is sweating already because the deputy leader of the Liberal Party is saying, ‘In the reshuffle, a couple of the blokes have got to go.’ Member for Moncrieff, if you keep misrepresenting the situation about employment in this country, you ought to be the first to go.

Here are some of the real facts about employment in this country. This is a great day on which to be debating this issue of small businesses because there are now 15,250 more Australians employed in the retail sector than there were in November of last year. Why would that be? Could that be related to the stimulus package—the stimulus package that they regard as a low-quality spend, a waste of money? I do not think it is a waste of money to have 15,250 more people employed in the retail sector than there were in November last year when there are 308,000 fewer people employed in retail in the United States, 37,000 fewer in Canada, 32,000 fewer in the UK and 31,000 fewer in New Zealand. It is the direct result of the stimulus package.

I will just show my colleagues—because I know the member opposite will not be interested in this—the economic growth in our country in the March quarter. Here is the chart showing economic growth in this country in the March quarter—it is positive. We are right up there in the right-hand corner. Good on Poland and good on Australia—we are the only two countries in the OECD that have positive economic growth.

If we go to chart 8, we see the same thing on retail sales, the very point I was making. Look at the retail sales figures there, I say to the shadow minister. Australia, in the orange box, is up there, growing, growing and growing—and in the United States, negative; Canada, negative; Japan, negative; New Zealand, negative; and, the Euro area, negative. So we have growing retail sales in this country. You know what has been going on despite the dishonest scare campaign of the coalition? What has been going on in the last couple of weeks is a lift in consumer confidence and a lift in business confidence, including a lift in small business confidence.

I reckon that the reason for that lift in small business confidence is that small business know that on our side we are sticking up for them, on our side we are supporting small business with our small business tax break, with our stimulus package—70 per cent of which is investment in nation-building infrastructure—and with the biggest school modernisation program in Australia’s history. Less than a year from now there will be 35,000 construction sites.

Who is going to be working on the construction sites? The tradies, the carpenters, the plumbers and the electricians. They are supposed to be, as far as members opposite are concerned, the core constituency of the coalition. We are supporting them and the coalition is doing nothing to support them—worse than that, they are talking the economy down, trying to smash consumer confidence and small business confidence. Why? For their own miserable gain. They only want gain for themselves, for those 30 jobs on the front bench—not the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are being preserved and protected by this government.

Treasury estimates show that 210,000 Australians are in jobs now because of the stimulus package, because of the investment allowance and because of the nation-building infrastructure. I think that is great news, and do you know what? So do small business. Surveys have been released just today, such as the ACCI-Westpac survey of industrial trends, which says that general business confidence has seen its largest improvement since 1975. Could that be right? I know that the coalition gets that survey—why didn’t the member for Moncrieff mention it? Why aren’t you there talking the economy up instead of talking the economy down? The answer is: because it does not suit you to talk the economy up. It does not suit you to join this government in supporting small business and small business confidence.

Another major survey was released today specifically related to small and medium enterprises, and do you know what it shows? The strongest quarterly increase in the survey’s 16-year history. They are good results. They are great results. Go the small business community of Australia! We are sticking up for the small business community of Australia. This Sensis survey is interesting because it is about small- and medium-sized businesses. Small businesses were also reported as being more confident than medium businesses for the first time since November 2000. So the small and medium businesses are especially confident.

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