Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, how is the government driving reform and investing in services through the budget to help keep our economy strong?

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

I thank the member for Page for her question, which is about the future of the Australian nation and about her constituents and their access to jobs and opportunity today—that is, it is a very serious question. The government is focused on keeping the economy strong. First and foremost, what we need to deliver for Australians is a strong economy. Our economy is strong today, and that is because we have made the right judgments in the past to keep the economy strong. When the global financial crisis threatened, we invested to save 200,000 Australian jobs, to keep people working. We have made the right decisions to rebuild Queensland and other disaster affected parts of the nation and to fund that properly. We made the right decision to kill Work Choices, the biggest threat to families struggling with cost-of-living pressures. And we have made the right decisions, tough decisions, to return the budget to surplus in 2012-13, exactly as promised, because it is the right decision for our economy—not for government to add to inflationary pressures which would feed through to cost-of-living pressures in a growing economy.

We understand that as our economy strengthens there will be some parts of the nation that are leaping ahead and some that will fear that they are at risk of being left behind. When I speak of the 'patchwork economy', it is of these economic circumstances that I speak. That is why the government are so determined to make sure that we spread the opportunities that this phase of economic growth gives us—the opportunities to get a job, with half a million jobs to be created over the next couple of years, building on the 750,000 jobs created so far; and the opportunity to get a trade, to get skills, to get the skills you need to get your first job and then, when you have that first job, to get another, better job. That is why even in a tight budget we have made sure that $3 billion are available to invest in skills.

We understand that, as our economy grows, so it is an economy in transition. We are an economy in transition from the phase of the global financial crisis to a phase of rapid growth. We are also an economy that needs to be in transition from generating more emissions per head of carbon pollution than any other developed nation on earth to a clean energy economy. That is why, as our economy faces that transition, we will act in the most efficient and prudent way to spur that transition to a clean economy, and that is by pricing carbon. And in this phase of economic growth we will also be spreading the opportunities that come from the minerals boom through the Minerals Resource Rent Tax and the opportunity that it represents for Australian companies to have a reduced tax rate, for Australian small businesses to enjoy new tax arrangements and tax breaks and for working people to enjoy more superannuation and a better retirement income.

Our economic strategy is central to everything that this government does, because there is no more important priority for the future of Australians and their families than keeping the economy strong. It is about the jobs and opportunities they have today and it is about building and spreading those opportunities for tomorrow.