Mark Arbib (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this very important committee stage of the debate. I do apologise beforehand—I picked up a cough from my daughter, so I may need to take regular breaks just to clear my throat. Yesterday in the United States anyone who was watching CNN or some of the business channels would have noted that President Obama gave a major interview about the state of the United States economy and the scale of the crisis that he has inherited as president. President Obama put it like this:

And if there’s anyone out there who still doesn’t believe this constitutes a full-blown crisis, I suggest speaking to one of the millions of Americans whose lives have been turned upside down because they don’t know where their next paycheck is coming from.

He went further:

We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression. Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don’t act immediately, millions more jobs will be lost …