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

Thank you, Speaker. Unlike the shadow Treasurer I am proud of what our country has achieved over the past 5½ years: 960,000 jobs. How have we done that? Because we have a responsible level of debt, we have a good fiscal policy which has been given the tick by the major ratings agencies and we are making major investments in our future—major investments in economic infrastructure, major investments in schooling—and, of course, making our country fairer. We can do all of these things if we have a detailed plan.

In our budget we have put out a detailed plan about how we are going to grow our economy, how we are going to be a smarter economy to take advantage of the Asian century and how we can make our society fairer. We have done that within a responsible fiscal policy. Our performance across any range of indicators is far better than New Zealand's. So I feel very sorry for the shadow Treasurer, who wants to keep running our country down. He does not get the basis of our economic strength. He does not understand what we need to do to keep our economy strong. Of course, they will invent any reason to avoid laying out a detailed plan for the future.

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