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

No point screeching and carrying on about it: that is a fact. And there are millions and millions of working people around the world who are now in the despair of unemployment because that financial crisis happened and because it had consequences in the real economy, the global economy and the economies of nations.

That means that our nation, at a time of global financial crisis—and think about those words carefully: global financial crisis—had to confront a few choices. First and foremost, what was going to happen, and what did happen because of the global financial crisis, was that there was going to be a huge hit to government revenues. The Leader of the Opposition likes to forget that. And, indeed, revenues have not recovered in the way the Treasury predicted. The Leader of the Opposition likes to forget that. That fact of course was always going to put pressure on the budget; it was always going to cause a deficit to arise. The Leader of the Opposition should have the honesty to acknowledge that.

And then this government took the responsible position of putting jobs, opportunity and growth first; of making sure that a couple of hundred thousand Australians could stay in employment. I respect that the Leader of the Opposition made the opposite choice. He would have preferred to have seen those Australians unemployed. We did not; we supported their jobs and we are proud that we did. The Leader of the Opposition has to get out of economics kindy class and start dealing with the facts. (Time expired)

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