Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline the importance of this weekend’s Council of Australian Governments meeting?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have in this parliament and, more broadly, in the nation been discussing the impact of the global financial crisis on jobs, on growth and on families. We have indicated in my answer to the Leader of the Opposition’s earlier question one of the measures we have taken so far in the Economic Security Strategy, which was an economic stimulus package of some $10.4 billion, equivalent to about one per cent of GDP. As a rule of thumb, a $10 billion injection by government in the economy is capable of generating up to 75,000 jobs. That is one of the reasons why we have provided that injection now, and the reason we are doing it now is that the unemployment data across the developed and developing economies around the world is becoming gloomier and gloomier.

A second core element is the figure that I outlined in my statement to the parliament yesterday on the global financial crisis, and that is that we are prepared to put to the states a proposal of some $11 billion or more in terms of the reform proposals contained in the areas of health, education and elsewhere for the long-term better working of the federation. The employment stimulus of that is also of significance because, if you combine that with the other actions that we have taken, these again represent concrete, direct investments by government in the real economy to support jobs growth at a time when the global financial crisis, the global economic crisis, is turning on us.

As I have outlined in earlier remarks, it is important that, in addition to providing stimulus to the economy now, stimulus to growth now and stimulus to jobs now, the government continue to prosecute our long-term economic reform agenda and our broader agenda of reform of the federation. First and foremost, that hinges on what we do with long-term productivity growth. Long-term productivity growth is built on the basis of investing in education, skills and training, investing in infrastructure and ensuring that we have got the best possible settings when it comes to business regulation in the future—and in fact we are taking as much of the regulatory burden off business as possible. This long-term reform agenda will continue to be prosecuted in the proposals we put to the states, most particularly on education but also on business deregulation, in the days which lie ahead. That is because we believe that we have to get on with the business of long-term reform, to make sure that we are building long-term economic growth.

At the same time, the government is also prepared to advance the whole area of reforming the relationship between the Commonwealth and the states in health and hospitals. There has been a gross and grave history of underinvestment by the Commonwealth in the public hospital infrastructure of Australia, and that is what this government in its first 12 months in office has sought to get down to and tackle in detail with the states and territories in the negotiations leading up to the Council of Australian Governments meeting which is scheduled to be held on Saturday. Therefore, these long-term reform agendas—aimed at upskilling the Australian workforce for the long term, aimed at investing in our nation’s infrastructure for the long term, aimed at taking the regulators off small business’s back for the long term—are important agendas which we intend to prosecute with the states and territories to advance the long-term economic interests of Australia and, furthermore, to prosecute reform across the wider fabric of the federation to deal with health and hospitals as well.

So, as the Council of Australian Governments gathers in Canberra on Saturday, what will be close to the government’s heart and mind is this: (1) what we do in terms of providing further stimulus to the economy and jobs growth through the investment we are proposing, (2) continuing to prosecute the education revolution which underpins so importantly long-term productivity growth for the Australian economy and (3) actually tackling the substantial underinvestment in public hospitals and health that we saw over such a long period of time while those opposite occupied the treasury bench.

The government, therefore, in its strategy seeks to deal with the immediate challenges presented to us by the global financial crisis by investing in and stimulating the economy, growth and jobs and at the same time, through those investments, prosecuting our long-term agenda of reform. For Australia this represents not just a strategy which deals with the immediate problems which confront us but also, critically, a strategy for the long term. We are on about the business of reforming the federation, we are on about the business of ending the blame game and we are on about the business of using the instruments of policy available to us to invest in long-term jobs growth and support for families in Australia. To those opposite: this is a necessary course of action and I would suggest, as I respectfully suggested yesterday, that they might join the national project on this rather than simply engage in the rank political opportunism for which they have become so renowned.