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

I thank Senator Pratt for that question. I am happy to inform the Senate that construction through the education stimulus is going extremely well. I have talked about the number of tradespeople—electricians, plumbers, bricklayers et cetera—who are all being supported by the stimulus, but we now have the latest construction figures from September coming out of the ABS, which show a 2.2 per cent increase in total construction and 6.9 per cent annually to September, seasonally adjusted. We have also had further research from a company called Macromonitor, which predicts growth of 11 per cent in building starts across the entire non-residential building sector in 2009-10, after a 30 per cent drop last year.