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

Let me run through the quarterly results for September across the G7 countries. Australia is not a member of the G7, but our quarterly growth was 0.4. The United States was 0.5. Japan was 0.1, down from 0.4 in the previous quarter. Germany was 0.1. France was 0.3. The United Kingdom was 0.3. Italy was 0.1. Canada was 0.3. For the Euro area it was 0.2. For the OECD it was 0.3. The Australian economy grew by 0.4, and it wasn't just that; through the year growth went from 1.4 to 1.7. Our through-the-year growth is higher at the end of the September quarter than it was at the end of the June quarter. But, importantly, we had a 2½ per cent growth in household disposable income, which is the biggest increase in a quarter we've seen in a decade, and the average compensation per employee, the average wage, rose by 0.7 in the quarter to 2.9 per cent higher over the year.

Those opposite like to talk the economy down, but the Australian people have a different view; they wanted to earn more and wanted to keep more of what they earned. That is what they voted for at the last election, because they knew the Labor Party wanted to take more of their hard earnings. They wanted to increase taxes. They thought the answer to the challenges in our economy was higher taxes. Only an economic genius of Labor Party pedigree, of those opposite, could think that increasing taxes at a time of international and domestic strain on our economy was a good idea, but it takes an absolute economic incompetent like the Leader of the Opposition to think of keeping those taxes six months later. He has had six months to say: 'That was a bad idea. That was a shocking idea. We shouldn't have sought to take money away from retirees. We shouldn't have sought to tax housing. We shouldn't have done any of that.' He is stuck to those taxes just as much as the previous Leader of the Opposition was.

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