Economy

Mr DOWLING: My question without notice is to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to today’s report by The Centre for Independent Studies that specifically states that Queensland ‘is not in as strong a position to deal with the aftermath of the recent flood disaster as it would have been several years ago’. Given this independent finding, could the Treasurer advise to what extent economic mismanagement and squandering of the state’s finances will hinder the speed and the scale of recovery from the floods?

ANSWER

Mr FRASER: I thank the shadow minister for his question and congratulate him on his appointment to the front bench. It seems that one of the qualifying criteria for joining the front bench of the LNP is to be a global financial crisis denier. The reality, of course, is that there was something that happened over the last couple of years. Yes, it was a global financial crisis. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition missed it. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition completely missed it during the election campaign. At the end of last year he said that it happened a year later than it did, such was his denial of it. Of course, we have seen the member for Redlands rocket on to the front bench because he obviously has the rocket scientist approach to denying the global financial crisis. Of course there was a global financial crisis. No-one here or outside is denying that except for those on that side of the chamber.

 What happened is this. We took a view about prioritising the building program and we made decisions in order to position the state for an economic recovery. As I said, what was occurring yesterday? As I detailed yesterday, we saw business investment growing for two quarters—at a rate above the nation in the September quarter. Business was coming back. What have we seen? We have seen 18 months of jobs growth. We positioned this economy ready for a recovery. It was building towards the end of last year and building into this year, and what has occurred since then? Yes, there has been an intervening event over the Christmas period. That, of course, was going to knock the state back down. That report may well say that, but I cannot find an economy in the world that is in the same position that it was two and a half years ago before the global financial crisis. If the honourable member can say that no economy suffered any impact from the global financial crisis whatsoever, I would be glad to hear about it. I am sure he can ring the ‘centre for non-independent studies’ and get them to send him a note about what might have happened.

 However, as we have said many times before, yes, Queensland was impacted by the global financial crisis. We did take a big hit. We are the second most trade exposed economy in the nation. Of course it was going to impact on us more so than in other places around Australia and indeed around the world. What did this government do? It put in place a program to recover. That recovery was underway. The evidence about that is clear. I am equally confident that by this year’s end, according to the forecasts we have seen, this is an economy that will be hitting capacity constraints rather than suffering from a lack of demand. That is because we are going to see the sort of investment decisions that we have seen come home and build strength in the economy. We are going to see a reconstruction effort add to that. The Queensland economy deserves the support of the opposition and the LNP, not a campaign to talk it down.