Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. Will the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on recent assessments of the impact of the global recession on employment, and the government’s efforts to protect Australian workers?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question and know about his deep concern for supporting jobs today during the days of the global recession. Today the OECD, in its 2009 OECD employment outlook, has delivered powerful new evidence that the government’s decisive action to combat the global recession by nation building for recovery is supporting jobs and supporting small business as we invest in the infrastructure that this nation needs for tomorrow. The OECD report is powerful evidence that this economic stimulus is working. As the Treasurer has said, the OECD estimates that Australia’s fiscal stimulus package will result in employment in 2010 being 1.4 to 1.9 per cent higher than if no stimulus measures had been implemented.

When we look at the construction activity that is being supported by the government’s economic stimulus package it tells a powerful story. Let us look at other OECD nations. This report gives us the construction activity in Spain, which has seen catastrophic drops of 26 per cent in the year to the first quarter of 2009. We have seen catastrophic drops in the United States—a drop of 14 per cent in the year to 2009. By contrast, because economic stimulus in this country is supporting jobs, the ABS labour force data for the August 2009 quarter showed that employment decreased in our construction sector by around 0.5 per cent. This is powerful evidence that the economic stimulus is working to support jobs today.

The Building the Education Revolution program is the centrepiece of the government’s stimulus program. It is supporting jobs through construction activity right around the country. It is supporting tradespeople and small businesses and it is supporting young people in training, keeping them in all-important employment. The Leader of the Opposition used to wander around saying he was about jobs, jobs and jobs. We do not hear that any more because to be about jobs, jobs and jobs you have to be ready to act decisively in the face of a global challenge like the global recession—to act early and provide fiscal stimulus, provide economic stimulus while building the infrastructure we need for tomorrow. That is exactly what Building the Education Revolution is about—jobs today while we build the biggest school modernisation program in the nation’s history.