Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Given the strength of the Australian economy, would the Treasurer update the House on Australia’s private sector wealth and the level of growth in the last year?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Blair for his question. On Friday of last week, the Treasury released their annual estimates of net private sector wealth for the year up until 30 June 2006. It showed that the market value of Australia’s net private sector wealth grew by 19 per cent over the course of that last full financial year. Although a main influence on wealth is family dwellings, they were not the largest contributor to this rise because of the moderation I talked of earlier to the House. The main influence was the increase in business assets, which has coincided with the Australian Stock Exchange moving to the highest levels ever recorded in its history. Millions of Australians are sharing in that wealth, either directly or through their superannuation funds. Australia’s net private sector wealth in nominal terms now stands at around $7.4 trillion dollars, or more than seven times our annual GDP. This is a consequence of the fact that more Australians are in work than ever before, their wages are higher than ever before, their investments in savings—particularly through superannuation—are higher than ever before and Australian business is more profitable than it has ever been.

The Leader of the Opposition, who has no experience of economic policy other than as a staffer in a state government, which is his main claim to economic experience, has gone so far as to try and describe the Australian economy as a—and this is a word that I am not familiar with; it sounds like a pharmaceutical of some kind or another—‘brutopia’, something that the minister for health could put on the PBS list, I think, and subsidise. He says that brutopia is ‘economic neo-liberalism’ with ‘unrestrained market capitalism’ sweeping all before it. Brutopia—also available at health shops near you as an alternative or complementary medicine!

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Otherwise known as Work Choices.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And the member for Melbourne—the Socialist Left—comes in on cue with his complaints about Work Choices. What a shocking piece of legislation that was!

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tanner interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Melbourne does not have the call.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have only had 245,000 jobs as a consequence, in the aftermath.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. The Treasurer was asked to update the House on the level of growth last year, and I ask you to draw him back to the question.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have been listening carefully to the Treasurer. I believe he may well have been responding to an interjection, and he certainly is in order—but I would not encourage anyone to interject.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have had the largest accumulation of wealth in Australia’s history. We have had more jobs created than we have ever had before in a single year. We had Work Choices legislation—and this genius from the Socialist Left says it is all a failure. We have the other member whose last big day out, on Sunday, was on a joint bill with ‘Jihad’ Jack Thomas, down in Melbourne—the member for Wills on a joint bill with Jack Thomas. Not quite according to the script, that one. Anyway, let me go back to economic policy. We are now experiencing our ninth—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is a little less interesting than ‘Jihad’ Jack Thomas and the member for Wills! We are now experiencing the ninth surplus budget under this government. We have now retired every single dollar of the Labor Party’s $96 billion debt. We are now funding unfunded superannuation liabilities, which were never touched by any other government in Australian history. There have been two million jobs created since this government came to power. There is $7.4 trillion of private sector wealth. And the Leader of the Opposition calls that ‘brutopia’. One can only wonder what would happen if he were to get his hands on the levers of economic power. But let me tell you—

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tanner interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Melbourne is warned!

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

it is something that we will protect the Australian people from at all costs.