Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my good friend Senator Feeney for that question. As I have pointed out many times in this chamber, we are facing the most serious global economic downturn since the Great Depression. To put this into some context, in the last three months of last year there was the sharpest downturn in the global economy in living memory. Twenty-one of the 25 OECD countries for which we have figures contracted in the December quarter of last year. Recent data shows that the US economy has shed more than 600,000 jobs a month in each of the last three months. Let us be clear about this: job losses of this magnitude are unprecedented in the 70-year history of the data series.

Last week’s national accounts showed that, like almost all other developed economies, our economy contracted in the December quarter. Our economy contracted by 0.5 per cent in the December quarter to be 0.3 per cent higher through the year. However, it is very important to note that this is a much milder contraction compared to most other countries. It demonstrates the point that the Rudd government has been making consistently: while we cannot completely resist the pull of global economic forces, we are still better placed than other nations.