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

I thank Senator Bushby for that question. The answer is: yes, I can. Let me advise Senator Bushby and the Senate first up that the government's economic plan for jobs and growth is working. Despite global economic headwinds, our economy grew by three per cent in the most recently reported 12-month period. That is twice the rate of Canada; that is better than any of the G7 economies; that is better than the OECD average; and it is much better than when we came into government, when the economy was weakening and had grown by just two per cent in the previous 12 months and when the unemployment rate was going up and up and up.

Right now, after two years of coalition government, our employment growth is strong. We would like it to be even stronger. Our unemployment rate is now down to 5.7 per cent. More than 440,000 new jobs have been created during our period in government. These things do not happen by accident. There has been our work on making our tax system more growth friendly, abolishing Labor's mining tax and abolishing Labor's carbon tax in our first budget and on reducing taxes for small business in our second budget, with the next instalment of our efforts to make our tax system more growth friendly to be delivered in this year's budget, tomorrow night. There has been our work to reduce the cost of red tape, left for us from opposition, by Senator Arthur Sinodinos.

Our ambitious infrastructure agenda has been taken to another level with the Prime Minister's Smart Cities program. Our ambitious export agenda is finalising export agreements with key markets in our region—China, Japan, South Korea—and of course there is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. There is our ambitious Innovation and Science Agenda and our ambitious defence industry agenda. There is getting rid of Labor's attack on small business mum-and-dad truckies. And of course we want to do more to keep the economy growing and to ensure that more jobs are being created across Australia, and that is what we are focused on.(Time expired)