Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

As we said at the last election and have said for many years, the ability to guarantee the essential services that Australians rely on, be it in hospitals, schools, aged-care packages, home care packages or disability support—all of these depend on a strong economy that can underpin a strong budget. A strong economy is one that has produced almost 1.5 million jobs over the last six years. A strong economy is one that has ensured, over the last three years, consecutive monthly increases in employment for 36 months. That is the first time we have ever seen this in the country since February 1978, which is when records began on these measures. It is the fact that we have been able to get Australians off welfare and into work which has been the central component of strengthening the budget, which has seen the budget coming back into surplus this year. When you can actually manage an economy and when you can manage your discipline on spending and get it under control and bring the budget back to surplus then you can also at the same time look Australians directly in the eye, as we did at the last election, and say, 'We can guarantee the essential services you rely on, because we know how to manage the economy and we know how to manage a budget.' That means we have guaranteed record funding to every school on the basis of student need, some $310 billion in our schools over the next decade—

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

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