Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I have one quick last question to ask—which I did forget; I do not want to delay—so the minister can deal with all questions in the one go. In relation to the community fund, it was suggested that that $200 million might create 6,000 to 7,000 jobs. I was wondering whether that is a figure with which the government agrees and whether Treasury have provided advice that their modelling or their analysis would indicate that that would be the rate of job delivery. If it were, can I say that the price per job with the community package—or the ‘community fund’, I think Senator Brown called it—would deliver jobs at about half the cost of the $42 billion package, and as a result it might be worth while to go back to the drawing board and see if we can deliver the 90,000 jobs being supported with a measure that would only require half the amount of expenditure.