David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on the economic challenges we still face as a nation one year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers?

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay for his question, because it is a year ago today that the US’s fourth largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy. Of course, that collapse heralded the deepest global recession we have seen in three-quarters of a century. Confidence was shattered, global financial markets went into meltdown and the global economy went into freefall. Something like 29 of the world’s 33 advanced economies fell into recession, something like 12 million jobs were lost across advanced economies and something like $30 trillion was wiped from global stock markets. So this was 12 months that shook the world.

I think that Australians are entitled to be proud of the way in which they have all pulled together in the midst of this global recession. It has been the combination of economic stimulus, lower interest rates and community effort that has meant that Australia has performed so well. We are one of only a handful of advanced economies that have so far avoided recession and we are the only advanced economy to have recorded positive growth over the past year.

Last night President Obama made some statements on the crisis, as the Prime Minister was saying before. He made the point that, whilst there were some signs of returning to normal, this should not lead to complacency. We certainly agree with President Obama that the job is far from finished. In this country, like in the United States, we have those who wish to ignore the events of the past year. This is what President Obama said overnight:

There will be those who argue we should do less or nothing at all. There will be those who engage in revisionist history or have selective memories and don’t seem to recall what we just went through last year.

Who does that remind us of? It is those opposite. They denied the existence of the global recession. They would have sat and waited and done absolutely nothing. Because they do not understand the nature of the global financial crisis, they are not qualified to deal with the challenges that flow from it. They have demonstrated that day in and day out in this parliament.

The biggest challenge that we face is employment. Unemployment and underemployment are still very substantial challenges for this country. Unemployment has increased by the equivalent of 200,000 jobs in the past year. There has been a huge reduction in hours worked. The reduction in working hours across the economy is equivalent to the loss of more than 200,000 full-time jobs. That is why we as a country need to support our economy. We need to back in the essential economic stimulus to support Australians in work, to keep customers coming through the door and to support business.

So on this side of the House employment is our No. 1 priority, but it is not the No. 1 priority of those opposite. They have dismissed it as a second order priority. Support for stimulus comes from right around the country, from the business community, from the wider community but not from those opposite. It has been one monumental misjudgment by those opposite from day one. They are not qualified to understand the nature of the global recession and they are not qualified to understand what must be done to strengthen our economy into the future.