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

I am sure the unemployment figures released last week will be something that most Australians will be pleased about, will be relieved about, but of course those opposite were disappointed, because what they wanted to see—as we know from the way they talk about the economy; they always talk it down—what they no doubt would have championed, was a rise in unemployment. That is the nature of this opposition. What we saw was an unemployment rate that remained low, at 5½ per cent. We have seen about 960,000 jobs created since the Labor government came to office in November 2007, around 480 jobs per day. This stands in stark contrast to the millions of jobs that were lost all over the world as a result of the global financial crisis and stands in contrast to the hundreds of thousands of Australians who would have lost their jobs had the economic prescriptions of those opposite been followed then, and now, because we know that the economic prescriptions of those opposite lead to higher unemployment. (Time expired)