Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

At the core of this government's agenda is a productivity agenda, and during 12 years in office those opposite did not have a productivity agenda. We on this side of the House have a productivity agenda. Our productivity agenda is one in which we invest in the skills and the education of all of our people. That has been at the core of our agenda from day one, but because there has been a structural decline in our productivity over a long period of time, principally during the period in office of those opposite, it will take some time to deal with.

You do not retrain a workforce in a year. You do not retrain a workforce in two years. You do not lift the quality of an educational system in one or two years. You do not lift the quality of higher education in two or three years. A real fair dinkum productivity agenda takes time and those opposite did not have a productivity agenda over 12 long years in office. They left us with an infrastructure deficit and a deficit when it came to investment in education and training.

They may well go to the recent national accounts, but there is one thing that does show out through the recent national accounts and that is very simply that we did see a big hit to output in the recent national accounts. Why did we see that? Because a lot of people in places like Queensland were still in employment but there was no output. That is why you will see a blip in the productivity figures in this set of national accounts.

As we have seen, those opposite do not even understand what happened during the floods and have absolutely no idea of the magnitude of destruction and what it caused in many of the regional towns around Queensland. I know that some members over there understand it and some do not. So you do see a fall in the recent national accounts when it comes to productivity, particularly during this period, but we on this side of the House have a long-term productivity agenda. Those on that side of the House have no such thing and that is why they are so unqualified for high office.

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