Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs ) Share this | Hansard source

In May 2010, I met a young bloke called Joshua at a jobs expo I was running up on the Central Coast when I was the Parliamentary Secretary for Employment. Joshua was a young bloke who had left school when he was 16 and he had never had a job in four years. He got a job that day at the jobs expo working at the Ali Baba shop in Westfield Tuggerah Shopping Centre. He got a start, after being unemployed for four years. I remember talking to his mum a few weeks after that. She told me that he was a different boy, a different person, after he had got a job after being unemployed for four years. I checked up on Joshua just the other day. He has now moved out of home and he has got another job working full time as a security guard. So he is on his way. This is just one story, just one job. Since this government has come to office we have created 700,000 jobs, 700,000 stories just like that.

The member for North Sydney made some comparisons. He invited us to compare the record of this government and that of the former government, and I am happy to take up the challenge. The fact is that this government has seen 700,000 more people getting a job than when the Liberal Party was last in power. Look at the topic of income tax. Income taxes are lower now than they were under the Liberal Party. Someone who is on $50,000 a year is now paying almost 20 per cent less in tax than they were when we came to office. The member for North Sydney also talked about interest rates. Interest rates are also lower now than when the Liberals left office.

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