Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Even as a proud Sydneysider, I'm happy to concede that the Melbourne Cricket Ground is the spiritual home of Australian sport. To see this magnificent stadium filled to its capacity is a sight to behold, and the MCG actually helps us visualise the over 400,000 new jobs created in this economy last year. For every one of those 400,000 jobs, we could fill every seat in the MCG four times over and still have people left over. And the vast majority of those 400,000 jobs were full-time—over 300,000 of them. Seventy per cent were in the private sector, and in my electorate of Hughes, which I proudly represent, the unemployment is down to 2.7 per cent.

What's the secret? The secret is that on this side of the House we understand that it is not government that creates jobs; it is the private sector. No-one expressed this better than President Reagan, who would have turned 107 yesterday, when he said—and listen to this, on the other side:

We who live in free market societies believe growth, prosperity and, ultimately, human fulfilment are created from the bottom up, not from the government down.

By reducing government spending, honouring the commitment to a balanced budget, reducing tax rates to encourage productive investment and personal savings, and eliminating excessive governance, we are convinced that we will enter a new era of sustained prosperity. (Time expired)