Last September, Australians saw Malcolm Turnbull make economic leadership the central argument for rolling Tony Abbott as Prime Minister.
“[Tony Abbott] has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs,” Malcolm Turnbull said.
But seven months on, it’s clear economic leadership is still lacking.
When Labor was last in Government, we faced, and met, the challenge of the Global Financial Crisis.
Australia was one of the only developed countries in the world not to go into recession during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
A recession would have thrown hundreds of thousands of people – a generation – into unemployment and we were determined not to let that happen.
Labor’s stimulus package saved Australian jobs in the most difficult global circumstances since the 1930s – up to 200,000 jobs.
Despite the GFC, Australia received a Triple-A credit rating from the three major ratings agencies for the first time in Australia’s history.
Our Gross Domestic Product (the total value of goods and service produced by a country in a year) per capita rose from a ranking of 17th to eighth in the world.
And we went from being the 15th biggest economy in the world to being the 12th.