Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

You can't take it, can you? You dish it out all the time. I would say to Senator Sinodinos that he is right to raise the concern about the ongoing economic instability in Europe. Those are matters about which the government has been very concerned. As the senator would know, those are matters which drove some of the results we saw, particularly in the December quarter of last year, where we saw global instability, which obviously had an effect not only on the economies of Europe but on the Australian economy.

In answer to an earlier question from Senator Cormann, when I was asked about economic forecasts, I made the point that forecasts in the budget are broadly in line with those of market economists and other institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. So I do not think it is correct to say that the projected GDP figures are overly ambitious. What I would say is that the government's figures are probably even more conservative when it comes to growth in Europe. The senator has probably had a look at it, but there is quite a good discussion in the budget papers about the various contributors to global growth. The senator would be aware that the growth of Australia's major trading partners continues to track our forecast to be above average global growth, which is obviously a very good thing for the Australian economy.