LINDSAY TANNER: Further turbulence on global financial markets and revised growth estimates by the IMF have confirmed the seriousness of the international financial crisis.
The world's presenting Australia with an enormous challenge but Australian businesses, the working people of Australia and the Australia government are up to this challenge and together we are going to meet it and defeat it. The Australian Government is committed to doing everything within our power to keep growth and economic activity and jobs moving in our economy.
We are continuing to pursue these policies of sound economic management in order to ensure that we can push back against these very powerful international pressures.
The Opposition has no coherent position whatsoever on the global financial crisis. Malcolm Turnbull is incapable of having a single position on any issue for more than five minutes. We have seen him now back flip again on the question of fuel excise. He's already breaking his promises after he's only been in the job a couple of months.
The Rudd government is continuing to implement and honour its election promises. Malcolm Turnbull is breaking his election promises before we're anywhere near getting to an election.
And now he's stooped to the depths of attacking the Prime Minister's wife. It's about time he focussed on developing a coherent position on the very challenging economic circumstances that Australia faces.
I have enormous faith, enormous confidence in the creativity, the imagination and the strength of Australian businesses and together with sound economic management that strength is going to see Australia through. The underlying fundamentals of our economy are very strong, they're very sound.
We'll cop some bumps and difficulties over the next year or so but we are in very good shape to meet these challenges. I believe we will meet them and defeat them.
QUESTION: Does the tougher financial climate mean that the federal government won't be able to include paid maternity leave in next year's budget?
LINDSAY TANNER: We face a big challenge to put together a very difficult budget. It was always going to be a challenge to meet all of the expectations, all of the aspirations that are legitimately there in the Australian community. We are commencing work on putting together the 2009 budget but it's very early days. I'm clearly not going to speculate on what the outcomes of those deliberations might be. And of course many things will change over the next four to five months. We believe and hope that that change will be positive but we can't guarantee that circumstances will head in that direction.
We have many commitments that we intend to pursue and we're not going to comment on the likely outcomes in the short term for these commitments because we do face some very challenging economic circumstances here and now that have to be our over riding obligation, to ensure that sound economic management delivers good outcomes and that we insulate the Australian community from the worst impact of the global financial crisis.
QUESTION: But does the financial crisis mean that paid maternity leave is now less likely for next year?
LINDSAY TANNER: I'm not going to comment on the likelihood of any major possibility being funded or not funded in the forthcoming budget. There are many issues we have to deal with, many things that we have established consideration of like the issue of homelessness, the higher education funding, innovation. There are a lot of things in the pipeline that the Government's committed to dealing with, without having specific timelines on precisely when and in what way we would deal with them.
We intend to stick to those commitments, to deal with these issues but budgets are always about tough decisions. They're always about priority choices and there's no doubt that next year's budget is going to be developed in an environment that was - is going to be quite a bit tougher than people anticipated.
QUESTION: [indistinct]
LINDSAY TANNER: It's up to individual state governments to make decisions about assisting people in their housing market but clearly given that our government has committed to providing very substantial assistance to first home owners we would welcome any other assistance that comes from other Australian governments. We believe that keeping the housing market strong and robust is critical in pushing back against these very powerful international economic forces. Housing is always one of the first things to feel those pressures so it's very important for governments to be pushing back against those influences.
It's a matter for individual states as to whether they put particularly initiatives on the table and it's a matter for them as to what those initiatives might consist of. But clearly we absolutely support the rationale of assisting home buyers. That's something that is a very important part of pushing back against these negative international economic forces.
* * End * *| Media Contact: | Website: |
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| Nardia Dazkiw - 0418 144 690 | www.financeminister.gov.au |
