Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for his question. The economic security package announced yesterday was part of a comprehensive and decisive response by the Rudd Labor government to the worsening economic and financial crisis. We thought it was important that we take decisive action, that we take early action, to best protect the Australian economy and Australian households from the impact of what is a very difficult financial position.

What we all know is that the global financial crisis has taken a turn in recent times for the worse and that the impacts of that crisis are not yet known. We are in uncertain times, difficult times, and the full extent of it is yet to be clear. But what we do know is that all the forecasts for economic growth among the major economies of the world, like America and Europe, are for reduced growth, for rising unemployment and for significant financial difficulties.

What this government did was take advice from Treasury and from Finance and look at the Reserve Bank’s advice and look at what was needed in the Australian economy. We took measures to stabilise confidence in the banking sector, and they were announced last week. We believe the banking sector is strong, but we thought it was important that we reinforced that message by announcing the guarantees that we did to reassure investors and to ensure that our banks were competitive in the international environment.

What we did in the announcement yesterday was announce an economic security package that provides a stimulus to the Australian economy. It provides relief for pensioners and families but provides an economic stimulus to assist the Australian economy to resist the pressures for a reduction in growth in the economy. Those measures have been welcomed throughout the Australian community—by economic commentators, by pensioner and disability groups, by representatives of family groups. People understand that this is a decisive measure that will assist the economy and will allow us to provide security for our economy and our households when dealing with the very difficult international economic times.

What we made clear also yesterday was that the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, MYEFO, will be released by mid-November. That will contain the revised forecasts for the national economy. That will be publicly available, as Senator Minchin well knows. That will provide the best advice available to the Australian government at the time on the impact of the international global financial crisis on the Australian economy. That will contain revised estimates for growth, for unemployment—for all the major macro indicators of the state of the Australian economy. That will be made available.

We clearly acted, in framing this package, on the advice of our financial experts within the Public Service and we took that advice very seriously, but the forecasts for our broader economic conditions and the impact that this will have on our budget position will be released in MYEFO. That will be released within a month and that will provide all the information about the impact on the Australian economy. (Time expired)