Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am a hardworking local member, actually, and my local businesses are hardworking too. I would like to share with you the way people were feeling back in October last year when the global financial crisis first emerged. I can tell you that there was an absolute collapse in retail spending in my electorate, and retail is a major part of Parramatta because of the Westfield shopping precinct. There was a collapse in construction; it had essentially dried up and, again, construction is a major part of the work in my electorate. Car yards were in danger as well. There was an incredible amount of fear back in October.

When I talk to them now about the time between then and now, they tell me the stories of what the stimulus package has done for them. I meet tradies and small construction companies that had no work back then, and the only work they have had in the last six months has been work on the stimulus package. I meet retail people that tell me they would have been out the door at Christmas if it had not been for what the opposition calls the ‘cash splashes’, which was the early spending designed to stimulate retail in the early days of the crash.

I can tell you again, because I was out two weeks ago doorknocking businesses in my area, that business knows that the only reason interest rates would stay at three per cent—which are emergency-level 50-year lows—is because the economy was still tanking. They know that interest rates will rise as the economy begins to recover and they also know that, if the economy does not recover or if we had not spent the stimulus money, we would be looking at business closures and unemployment at a far higher level than we are now. They know absolutely that that downward spiral that takes place when people start to lose their jobs would have been their future if this government had not taken the action it took with that stimulus package late last year.

I want to talk a little bit about the argument that the opposition continues to make about government continuing to spend while interest rates are rising. I have sat in the meetings of the economics committee and listened to the Governor of the Reserve Bank and I have read the transcript since and there is nothing in what the Governor of the Reserve Bank has said that supports the Liberal Party proposition. When the economy started to slow so significantly, both the Reserve Bank and the government put our foot on the accelerator. Both of our feet are still on the accelerator, but both of us are easing back. Interest rates are still at extremely low levels and we are gradually pulling the stimulus package back. We are both working in exactly the same direction. We have eased off a little but both of us know that the growth rate in this economy is still only 0.6 per cent. It is still incredibly low. We are nowhere near the kind of recovery that we will need to start to see interest rates and fiscal policy return to normal levels. We are still in a position where we need to care for the businesses in our economy.

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