Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on how the government's policies are driving jobs, investment and economic growth, including in my electorate of Robertson?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. Around the country, Australians, families and businesses are seeing the benefits of the economic leadership we promised to deliver and we are delivering. And, whether it is in the honourable member's electorate or in the electorates of all honourable members, we are starting to see confidence growing, investment growing and jobs being created.

Now, 403,000 jobs were created last year. That is 1,100 more jobs, in fact, every day. That is a level of growth in employment we have never seen before in Australia. Participation is up. Employment is up. We talk about wage rises, and we are looking to see now, this year, the growth in wages that a stronger economy will deliver. There are 403,000 Australians who got a good pay rise last year. They all got a job—403,000 Australians who did not have a job got into work, and that is a consequence of the leadership we provided.

We see today the ANZ job ads index. That's out today. That shows job advertisements are now nearly 14 per cent higher than a year ago. What that means is that employers are looking for labour; they're looking for employees; they're looking—

Ms Chesters interjecting—

The honourable member opposite is mocking people looking for jobs. Labour hire—she likes to despise it. It is extraordinary, isn't it! It's extraordinary. This class of professional apparatchiks, all of them brought up through the union movement—none of them work. They think manual labour is a Mexican bandit. As the Deputy Prime Minister says, they've abandoned labourers; they've abandoned workers; and they'll be abandoning a lot more of them as they race to the left to hold the seat of Batman. That will be great! We'll see Ged Kearney now. She is going to be writing Labor's new economic policy: down with profits, down with bosses, down with companies and down with business.

That is the new policy of the Labor Party—rushing off to the left and leaving behind the Australians that need a job, that need a chance and that need new markets so the businesses they work for can export to them. They need the opportunities we're creating. We are starting to see the strong growth, the better times ahead, that the Treasurer spoke about last year. We're starting to see them, and we need to stay the course. (Time expired)