Mark Arbib (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Government Service Delivery) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying, when Lehman Brothers collapsed the government acted swiftly and decisively. That is correct. We did it for one reason: to protect jobs. The Australian government working together with business, working together with the trade union movement, has pulled together and the results are there. The facts are clear. We are only one of a handful of countries that have actually avoided recession. We are the only advanced economy to have recorded positive growth over the past year, and we had the second lowest unemployment of all major advanced economies.

As we have said and as the Treasurer has said, we are not out of the woods yet. The international economy remains fragile. As for domestic figures, ABS figures released yesterday show that housing starts have fallen by 3.7 per cent in the June quarter. That is the fourth straight quarter fall. On top of that, retail sales declined by one per cent over the month to July 2009. It is for those very reasons that we must continue with the stimulus plan and continue with the stimulus strategy. The government is now moving the stimulus into the next phase. We are now moving into the infrastructure phase. Seventy per cent of the stimulus is infrastructure; 35,000 projects are being rolled out over the country over the next 14 months. What does this mean? This means jobs. (Time expired)