Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Reynolds for that very important question. I am very pleased to inform Senator Reynolds and the Senate that we are continuing to successfully implement our long-term plan for stronger growth, more jobs and to repair the budget. What we saw at the Labor Party national conference a few weeks ago was that the alternative government of Australia has no economic plan, no plan to strengthen growth, no plan to strengthen job creation and no plan to get government spending under control or to repair the budget.

Our economy today is stronger than it was when we came into government. More jobs are being created today than when we came into government. The most recent quarter of national accounts data, released earlier this year, shows that we have one of the fastest-growing economies in the developed world—a faster-growing economy than any of the G7 countries. More than 330,000 new jobs have been created since we came into government, 163,000 new jobs since the beginning of this year—much better than when we came into government.

Despite global economic headwinds, our economic outlook is better than it would have been if the country had not changed direction after the defeat of the last Labor government, if we had not removed Labor's job-destroying carbon tax, if we had not removed Labor's job-destroying mining tax, if we had not reduced red-tape costs for business by more than $2 billion, if we had not rolled out our record infrastructure investment, if we had not finalised three new free trade agreements with key markets in our regions and if we had not embarked on the important task of getting government spending under control and getting the budget back into surplus.