Federal News: Report from Graham Perrett - Federal Member for Moreton

The Rudd Government’s Nation Building and Jobs Plan is working to help protect Australian jobs today while delivering nation building infrastructure for tomorrow. In fact, a massive 70% of the economic stimulus package is about infrastructure. That’s $77 billion for better rail networks, highways, hospitals, solar technologies, ports, broadband networks and school infrastructure.

A recent IMF report commended the government’s approach saying: “We welcome the quick implementation of targeted and temporary fiscal stimulus. The stimulus proves a sizeable boost to domestic demand in 2009 and 2010 that will cushion the impact of the global recession.”
The Liberal and National parties opposed the Rudd Government’s stimulus plan but the reality is if we followed their advice, we’d be in recession right now.

To do nothing on this front would have left more Australians out of work and the road to recovery that much harder. Without the Rudd Government stimulus more than 200,000 more jobs would be lost.
The Opposition have also returned to their usual tactics of scaremongering about the budget deficit. With $210 billion wiped from the Budget as a result of the global recession, the only alternative to responsible borrowing is to push the burden onto individuals and families by slashing government services or raising taxes.

Australia’s deficit is about half the average of other major advanced economies and we have a plan that will enable Australia to recover from the global recession faster than most other like economies. We also have a plan to return to surplus by 2015-16. The IMF endorsed this plan saying: “Few other advances countries have adopted such a clear commitment (to return the Budget to surplus).”

Our decisive and early action will ensure Australia comes out of this global recession stronger than before.