Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I absolutely do. Fifteen months after that, in the spring of 2008, with renewed confidence in what the government was doing for manufacturing we saw that decision overturned. One thousand jobs were saved right there—not to mention the indirect jobs—in the economy. That was decisive action, which absolutely affected the people in my electorate of Corio in meeting the costs of living. That action stands in stark contrast to the opposition, which, frankly, would not know industry policy if it jumped up and bit them on the nose. At the end of the day, what we in this country have is an economy in fantastic health. That is what we hear from the OECD when they talk about our economy being ‘one of the most resilient’ economies in the world. There were 375,000 jobs created last year, and 200,000 jobs were saved by virtue of the stimulus packages that we put in place, which were opposed by the opposition—stimulus packages which are now praised by the OECD. Labor have a record of decisive action. The economy that we now preside over is the envy of the world and it stands in contrast to the populist, rank and cynical politics that we see from the opposition. (Time expired)

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