Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I would obviously be very pleased to get from the member the details of the incident he refers to and I will investigate it fully. I am very happy to do that. On the broad assertion made by the member, perhaps the member should recognise that the world has been through a global financial crisis, the biggest economic event since the Great Depression of last century. As a result of that global financial crisis hitting economies around the world, including our own, the amount of revenue coming to the government has been fundamentally reduced. That is understandable. You see economic activity reduce, you see businesses under pressure and you therefore see revenue coming to the government also reduced. So the global financial crisis certainly did hit into the government's budget by way of billions and billions and billions of dollars of reduced revenues. It was also hitting into our real economy, which meant that we could have seen thousands and thousands of people lose their jobs, become unemployed—young people who did not get—

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