Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

Very briefly on that: out of the 200,000 jobs that I have been quoting—and I do not think people have much difficulty with that figure—the interesting point is that 178,000 are in fact full-time jobs. That is a very significant proportion. With the figures of, I think, two months ago, there was a substantial reduction in casual employment, but that was offset by a huge increase in full-time employment, which I think confirms my thesis that, as soon as employers felt confident they could dismiss employees in circumstances where they were not up to scratch or failing, as soon as that shackle was removed from them, a lot of people who used to have casual jobs all of a sudden got full-time jobs, and that must be good for everybody.