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

I thank the member for Page for her question. Yesterday I reported to the House on the changing global economic conditions, and overnight we have seen further broad based weakness in the euro area. There has been some improvement in the US figures overnight but we are still going to face very substantial economic headwinds in the global economy as we go forward.

In Australia we do have every reason to be confident about our fundamental economic strength. As the Prime Minister said, we avoided recession. Virtually alone amongst developed economies we avoided recession. We have low unemployment, we have low debt, we have low deficits and we are located, as the Prime Minister said, in the right part of the world at the right time.

But we cannot take all of this for granted. What we have to do is put in place the fundamental long-term economic reforms that will ensure our continued economic strength. Where would Australia be today without the far-sighted reforms of the Hawke and Keating governments? I will tell you where we would be: we would have a really high tariff wall, we would have an old, rickety, fixed exchange rate, and of course we would not have the national savings that we have got through national superannuation. What we would have is an economy stuck back in the 1970s. This indicates the importance of putting in place these long-term reforms for the future, the importance of putting in place a price on carbon. You cannot be a First World, first-rate economy in the 21st century unless you are powered substantially by clean energy.

We do need to boost productivity, and of course we have the NBN, a very substantial boost to productivity and a very important long-term reform. And of course we need reforms when it comes to the taxation system, bringing down taxes for small business so that they can grow. The patchwork nature of our economy makes these long-term reforms all the more important.

Those opposite want to go around the country talking our economy down. Shame on them for talking this economy down the way they do, day in, day out. They go wandering around telling people anything they want to hear and suddenly turn round and find out there is a $70 billion black hole in their budget.

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