Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline for the House the current outlook for the Australian economy? What does this say about the importance of investing for the future?

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

I thank the member for his question, because tomorrow I will attend the IMF and World Bank meetings in Tokyo. This is a difficult time in the global economy. We saw earlier this week the IMF revise down its global forecast. We see recession in Europe. We see a moderating of growth in the US. Of course, this is impacting on growth, in particular, in our region. The meetings this weekend will be important in assessing all of these trends and shaping the response of global bodies, including the IMF, to these challenging times.

It is the case that our economy is not immune from the fallout of what is happening elsewhere in the global economy. Locally, given these global headwinds, we also have a higher dollar and we have a cautious consumer, and that is weighing on some sectors of our economy. But, if you take all of these things into account and you look at the fundamentals of the Australian economy, you see an economy which is still the envy of the developed world. The IMF is still forecasting, for Australia, growth which is greater than that of every single major developed economy over this year and next. We had the revision from the IMF only a couple of days ago, which shows that our economy is the 12th largest in the world, up three places since we came to office.

I think all of this reflects the fact that we have strong fundamentals, and it reflects all of the hard work that has been done by Australian business and of course by workers in this country. It also reflects the response that this government put in place to the global financial crisis and the global recession—the fact that we, almost alone, avoided recession and the fact that we have been able to support employment in our community, with over 800,000 jobs created in this country since this government came to office, despite all of the circumstances of the global financial crisis and the global recession. That is something that I think everyone on this side of the House is immensely proud of because, when it comes to employment, that is the key to economic strength.

That is why it was pleasing today to see that the expected jobs growth for September was 14,500, driven by strong growth in full-time employment: 32,100 additional jobs when it comes to full-time employment. Of course, the participation rate did go up and that meant that more people came into the labour market. It also meant that the unemployment rate did go up. But what we have to keep in mind is that this is a very strong figure for Australia and we should not be talking it down, as the shadow Treasurer the Leader of the Opposition do every day of the week. As a Queenslander, I believe the Queensland economy also has a bright future, but it was very disappointing to see the results in Queensland, with the largest fall in monthly employment on record: 20,900 jobs. (Time expired)