Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a further supplementary question. In that case why has the government failed to address the plight of Australia’s manufacturing sector, which has lost 44,000 jobs—which is a 4.2 per cent decline—since the election of the Rudd government? Isn’t the minister’s admission today that the ‘budget circumstance is that we can’t provide it; simple as that’ proof that Labor has simply lost control of the nation’s finances?