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

I thank the member for Franklin for her question. As a Tasmanian member of this place, I know that she and other members are acutely concerned about the impact of the global recession in all states in Australia and across her state as well, and what practical actions can be taken to reduce the impact of the global recession.

There have been a number of releases of data over the last 24 hours which show that, while Australia is continuing to weather the storm of the global economic recession better than most economies, we are by no means out of the woods yet. Overnight and today the new Westpac-Melbourne Institute index of consumer sentiment report was released, dated 9 September. The Westpac-Melbourne Institute index of consumer sentiment rose by 5.2 per cent in September to its highest level since July 2007. To quote the Westpac Chief Economist, Bill Evans, ‘This is a truly extraordinary result.’

Consumer sentiment is 34.4 per cent higher over the last four months. The consumer sentiment is now 45.4 per cent higher than October 2008, when the government announced its first economic stimulus package. The September result, of course, is attributed by Westpac to relief on the part of consumers that the economy has avoided recession and that expected job losses have not materialised—although, as I think the Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday, we are still deeply concerned about the further loss of jobs in Australia because of the impact of that recession.

It is worthwhile also putting into context where consumer sentiment lies here relative to other economies around the world. Confidence in Australia has been above total OECD consumer confidence in each month since the announcement of the government’s stimulus strategy last October. Furthermore, according to the latest Nielsen Global Confidence Survey released in July, Australia’s consumer confidence is the fifth highest globally and higher than that of any of the other major advanced economies.

I said before that there is data out today which underpins the fact that Australia is weathering the global economic recession better than most other economies but also there is data which has come out, which represents a wake-up call to the Leader of the Opposition, the Liberal Party and the National Party about how difficult the road to recovery actually is. For any party to celebrate the early withdrawal of stimulus would quickly turn into a wake for Australia’s economic recovery. As we see in today’s retail data and housing finance data, we still have a long road ahead and the government stimulus strategy, through our infrastructure strategy, is a key element of making sure that we get there in the end.

I referred just now to the ABS retail data. I inform the House that in the month of July the value of retail trade fell by one per cent and in the same month housing finance also fell by 2.3 per cent. These are sobering facts for Australia, which indicate that we have a long, long way to go in terms of charting the course to economic recovery.

This data underpins the need for our nation building for recovery and our nation building for the future strategy—a strategy, which is, so far, working. But we have a long way to go. Our strategy is about supporting jobs, small business and apprenticeships today by investing in the infrastructure we need for tomorrow. As a result of the strategy, Australia is the only one of the 33 developed economies of the OECD to have registered positive economic growth over the last year, it is the fastest growing economy of the major advanced economies, it is the second lowest unemployment of the major advanced economies, it has the lowest debt and deficit of the major economies and it is the only one so far not to have gone into recession.

Government policy has had an impact here. Critically, the decisions by business and small business have also had a huge impact in registering a better performance in this economy relative to others which have been buffered by the global economic crisis.

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