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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Access Economics have also said that there are still grave uncertainties which are alive out there in the global economy and they have specifically warned about what follows as stimulus tails down. They have specifically warned about the impact on small business and jobs. Therefore I would draw the Leader of the Opposition’s attention to one core fact, and that is the internal design characteristics of the stimulus strategy in the first place, which was designed to surge maximally at the very beginning of the crisis and then to tail down over time. Remember that the IMF, in October 2008, characterised appropriate fiscal stimulus in these following terms. It needed to be ‘timely, targeted and temporary for it to be effective’. If this government has embarked upon a strategy like this—which we have—then the results are there in the economic data for all to see.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition: he really needs to sort out where the opposition stand on the question of stimulus, because, when this debate on the global economic recession and Australia’s response to it began, they came out and supported it. Then after a period of time the member for North Sydney went out there and said they just wanted $20 billion less—remember that statement? It was in the lead-up to the budget of this year, I seem to recall. Since then we do not quite know where they stand, but it seems to be that they stand for 95 per cent of the stimulus which the government has embraced. That is actually what they say in substance, yet in the public debate they pretend they have not embraced any of that stimulus support whatsoever.

The bottom line is that, as of the June quarter this year, the government’s stimulus strategy has already peaked and is coming down consistent with its design characteristics. That is how it was put together in the first place. In phase 1 of the stimulus, we have already seen, I believe—I am advised—some 93 per cent of that already invested. By the time we get to the conclusion of this financial year, two-thirds of the stimulus will have been invested. That is what being targeted and temporary is all about—necessary to support jobs, necessary to support small business and necessary to support tradies. We are in the business of making a difference in the economy, and guess what? This government has acted in concert with each and every other government across the G20 economies in embracing a similar approach to stimulus. That is why we took concerted action as the G20 to inject $5.5 trillion worth of global stimulus into a $63 trillion global economy.

What is the alternative which the opposition would suggest? Their preference, when it is all stripped away, is to actually have people’s jobs destroyed. That is it in a nutshell. They would prefer to stand back and allow the economic, employment and human carnage to unfold. Their preference would be for unemployment queues to be snaking outside every Centrelink office in Australia, getting longer and longer, because they know, and all the analysts have said, that what makes up the difference is the stimulus strategy—together with the actions taken by the Reserve Bank in its monetary policy settings.

Our policy on this is clear-cut. It is consistent with the G20 global economies. We take jobs and the protection of jobs as absolutely core business for the future. Those opposite, it seems, now believe that people’s jobs can be just held to ransom, thrown down the drain. Forget the human consequences and—let me say this—forget also that in so doing they would be consigning Australia to increased pressures on the budget through rising unemployment benefits and declining taxation receipts as a consequence of higher unemployment.

What is the net result? This economy in Australia has produced the fastest growth in the OECD. It has produced the highest growth of the major advanced economies. It has produced the second-lowest unemployment of the major advanced economies. It is the only economy not to have gone into recession.

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