Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I think some of the honourable member's colleagues thought 'farrago' was an old Abba song. The fact is, we left the Labor Party with a terrific economic legacy, and it deteriorated under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. We are trying to rebuild that legacy so that Australians can be more confident about the future. It is difficult.

There are headwinds in terms of terms of trade coming off from record highs. There are headwinds with the Australian dollar having been stubbornly high. There are headwinds internationally, where we are not seeing the sort of growth that was previously expected right across the world. There are headwinds when we have trading partners like Japan going into recession in the last few months; or in the case of Europe, Italy going into recession; or in the case of the Unites States—even though there is good news in the United States, the fact is that it is not as broad and as strong growth in the United States as many would have expected or hoped for. The fact is that China is not growing at the same speed that might have been expected and they are now our biggest trading partner.

But when you are resilient, when you are strong and when you are confident, you can cope with adversity. We are climbing a mountain of challenges, but we are determined to get to the top of it. Why? Because we have a plan to get to the top that is built on the back of sensible economic reforms, a measured approach to getting the budget back into surplus but also, importantly, doing everything we can to help to stimulate growth and confidence in the Australian economy.

I say directly to the Australian people: we want you to go out and spend for Christmas. We want you to go out and spend not just for Santa Claus but for Australia. We want you to do that because, ultimately, 2015 is going to be better than 2014, and that is because we are putting in place the sorts of reforms that are making the Australian economy more confident, that are making businesses more confident. That is illustrated in the latest job expectation and job advertisements data which confirms that we are on track to get more jobs into the Australian economy in 2015.

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