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

As the Prime Minister said, jobs growth in Australia is now running at 10 times the speed it was when Labor left government. Last month, there were 38,000 new jobs created. On average, in the last year of Labor there were 3,600 new jobs a month. So we are on track. Just this morning we saw some more good news. The Commonwealth Bank business sales index for July showed annual business sales growth was still very strong with sales up 7.7 per cent on a year earlier, well above the decade average of 5.3 per cent. That is great news about the Australian economy. And more great news about the Australian economy and the future of it is our commitment to the China free trade agreement. That agreement means more jobs and greater prosperity for everyday Australians wherever they are located. It means we can get more produce to market—a much bigger market. Just the growth last year in the Chinese economy was equivalent to half the size of the entire Australian economy. It illustrates the fact that they are hungry for our produce. They are hungry for the things we produce and they want to pay us well for it.

The Labor Party are all over the place on this one. Their chief critic of the China free trade agreement, Senator Penny Wong, is a spokeswoman for the CFMEU. She has put out a number of different media statements about 'misleading on the China free trade agreement' and 'advertising won't fix it' and how we are being deceptive. And then, as the Prime Minister said, Professor Bob Carr put out a statement yesterday for the Australia-China Relations Institute. I have grown a great deal of respect for Professor Carr since he left politics.

Mr Danby interjecting—

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