Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Wortley. To all senators: have a happy and safe 2010. It is the first question time. More importantly, 2010 is shaping up as the year the world is going to emerge from its worst global financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. According to the latest World economic outlook released by the independent International Monetary Fund, Australia grew by just under one per cent in the last calendar year. Australia was in fact the only country, the only advanced economy, to record positive growth last year. The only country in the world with an advanced economy to grow last year was Australia. The IMF attributes Australia’s world leading performance in substantial part to our ‘timely and significant policy response to the crisis’—in other words, the stimulus package. In real, human terms, the stimulus package has saved around 200,000 Australian jobs. Some 200,000 Australian jobs were saved as a consequence. Tens of thousands of businesses would have closed if it had not been for the stimulus strategy.