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

has created 225,000 jobs while practically every advanced economy in the rest of the world has been shedding jobs. If you look right across Australia and at the employment performance of the Australian economy over that period of time, we have seen jobs added when they have been lost in so many other parts of the world. A large number of jobs in international tourism, for example, have also been affected by the impact of the global economic crisis. Take, for example, Far North Queensland—the member comes from Queensland: the unemployment rate in Far North Queensland is currently in the vicinity of 12 per cent. One of the factors associated with that is the competitiveness in Far North Queensland of tourism businesses affected by a high Australian dollar. In response to those sorts of factors, what governments can do is to bring down the overall company tax rate for companies competing internationally.

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