Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How is the government keeping our economy strong while making sure that all Australians share in the wealth created by our natural resources?

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

I thank the member for Parramatta for her question and would note that it seems quite remarkable to me that, when a member in this parliament asks about a strong economy, what we get from the opposition are laughter and jeers. It is not clear to me whether they are laughing at the question or whether they are nervously laughing because they are so embarrassed to sit behind a leader who cannot read one page of material about a project as big as Olympic Dam. But whatever is motivating the laughter over there, on this side of the parliament we believe that keeping the economy strong and running it in the interests of working people is serious business. We believe it is such serious business that we as a government have worked hard to ensure that we continue to create jobs, with over 800,000 jobs created since we came to office; that we continue to make the right choices to bring the budget to surplus in 2012-13; and that we continue to do the right things with fiscal policy, which enables the Reserve Bank to do what it does, independently of government, with interest rates.

We have seen job creation—800,000 jobs created. Despite a reckless, destructive, hysterical fear campaign, we have seen 14,000 jobs created since the carbon price and the minerals resource rent tax started on 1 July. We are investing in major infrastructure projects that will be the backbone of future growth. We are ensuring that we have the infrastructure of the future, including the National Broadband Network. And as we keep our economy strong, we are finding new ways to distribute the benefits of a strong economy. You keep it growing and you use it for the interests of working people, including improving schools around the country and creating a national disability insurance scheme.

The opposition are conducting themselves as if these things are somehow luxuries—as if they do not matter to working people and to families around the country, as if they are not necessities. We understand that creating jobs is a necessity for working people, that doing things like tripling the tax-free threshold so people move from paying tax to paying no tax is a necessity for working people, and that helping people out with increased family payments and pensions is a necessity for working people. We understand that doing what we need to do to keep spreading the benefits of the boom is important to working people.

We will get on with that hard work, keeping the economy strong, always seeing what we can do to assist working people, dealing with the facts and doing the hard work. Over there, the Leader of the Opposition will continue to present to media conferences, sounding like the equivalent of a robocall. He only has one line. It does not matter what the question is; he will say the same thing, because he cannot be bothered doing any work or any reading to inform himself of the facts. (Time expired)