Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak about the Rudd government’s strong economic record and about the threats posed to our economy by the opposition—threats that make a mockery of this motion’s claim that we have wasted and mismanaged taxpayers’ money. When the Rudd government’s nation-building economic stimulus plan was announced, we were facing the prospect of a recession and a million Australians out of work. We took the view that we should do all that we responsibly could do to cushion the economy from the global downturn and to protect Australian families, Australian jobs and Australian small business. Because 70 per cent of our fiscal stimulus spending was investment in critical economic and social infrastructure—investments in road, rail, social housing and community facilities—we have been able to bolster consumer and business confidence while expanding Australia’s future economic capacity and boosting local community infrastructure.

The Rudd government’s stimulus strategy has been all about protecting jobs now while building a better future. I think that today’s labour force figures are a further tribute to Australian workers and businesses. They have really got behind our stimulus measures. Australia created 225,000 jobs while other countries were shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs. That is 225,000 people who have been able to tell their families, ‘I’ve got a job.’ That is 225,000 people who are still paying tax, still paying their mortgages and keeping our economy going. That is 225,000 people much better placed to pay and provide for themselves and their families. Is that a waste of taxpayers’ money? The results are remarkable given the headwinds generated by the global economic crisis that occurred elsewhere. In the US and Europe, unemployment remains stuck at around 10 per cent while here it is now 5.4 per cent and is expected to keep falling to 4¾ per cent by the June quarter of 2012, we hope. While these figures build confidence in our recovery, they also I think caution against complacency.

Our stimulus program was specifically designed to have its peak effects in the June quarter of 2009 and to phase down gradually after that. I think pulling the plug on stimulus overnight would risk the future of critical nation-building investments and the jobs and small business that depend on them. It would be an act of economic insanity, especially when 600,000 Australians remain unemployed, 60,000 in my home state of Western Australia alone, and when in WA unemployment remains more than two per cent higher than it was in October 2008 when this crisis began and when we recall that after the last recession unemployment took more than a decade to come down to prerecession levels. The fragility of the global recovery has also been underlined in recent weeks by the news from Greece and Spain highlighting the ongoing fragilities in many of the advanced economies of the world.

In this context, the demand from the opposition for the stimulus measures to be wound back is reckless in the extreme. Either the opposition are economically illiterate or they simply do not care about Australia’s unemployed. But Labor does care. We care about those thousands of unemployed Australians, tens of thousands of them in WA alone. Our unemployment data confirms what we on this side of the chamber have been hearing from the community, that times are still tough for many Australians, especially those in small business. Unlike the opposition, who appear to be deaf to these community concerns, we recognise that our stimulus initiatives continue to play a critical role in protecting the living standards of Australians by securing employment and building the productive capacity of the nation.

The Rudd government sees this as the beginning and not the end of the battle—the battle to ensure Australia’s prosperity and to combat the insidious effects of unemployment. Nation building for recovery lies at the heart of the Rudd government’s fiscal stimulus strategy and it also lies at the heart of the budget released by the Treasurer—nation building that will ensure the recovery brings with it new jobs and new investment, greater prosperity and better living standards for all Australians. With the ongoing demand for our commodities from rapidly growing economies in our region, Australia is well placed to benefit from a global recovery. The Rudd government’s policy settings have done much to keep Australians working and to protect Australian living standards.

We must continue to be vigilant. It is about investing in our infrastructure that will support our recovery, unlock our full economic potential and create the jobs of the future, protecting our living standards and ensuring our future prosperity. This government is determined to do the hard yards, the yards required to reform our economy and build a new era of sustainable prosperity. The Rudd government recognises that improving long-term productivity growth will be crucial for Australia’s future productivity and prosperity. It is about sustaining long-term productivity growth in the face of an ageing population. To do this, we must build advanced 21st century infrastructure—things like the NBN. We have to invest in a skilled workforce and we must tackle social exclusion, particularly by removing barriers to work and increasing workforce participation—all things that we have invested in in this budget and all things that will help promote the productivity of this nation. Then there is the $661 million for skills and training, including 70,000 new training places and support for 22,500 apprenticeships over five years. Again, surely this is not a waste of taxpayers’ money.