TRANSCRIPT

THE HON PETER COSTELLO MP
Treasurer

Doorstop Interview

Senate Alcove Courtyard

Parliament House, Canberra

Thursday, 12 August 2004
12 noon

 

SUBJECTS: Labour force, jobs, Telstra, economy

TREASURER:

Well, the jobs data which has been released for the month of July shows that

an additional 21,600 jobs were created, that they were part-time jobs, that

full-time employment remained constant, that the unemployment rate, whilst it

edged up a little to 5.7 per cent, continued for the eleventh month in a row

below 6 per cent, which is the longest run of low unemployment below 6 per cent

since we started taking the figures in 1978. So since 1978, which is the first

time these figures were taken, we have not had a run of eleven months below

6 per cent, and that has been led by strong employment growth over the last

eight years, and in the last 12 months something like, 232,000 jobs have been

created in Australia, 200,000 of those have been full-time. So, we are now at

historic lows in unemployment, lows that we haven’t seen since 1978 and

that is a consequence of the Australian economy, which has been continuing to

grow continuously over the last eight years, and important labour market reform.

And if we could reform Australia’s labour market, we could take unemployment

in this country even lower than it is today, and that is the challenge. And

I lay down this challenge to the Australian Labor Party, quit the stalling tactics,

quit the opposition in the Senate. Let’s reform the labour market and

let’s get more people into jobs.

JOURNALIST:

How much longer do you think it can remain below 6 per cent?

TREASURER:

Well, it is the longest run we have ever had below 6 per cent, and we started

collecting these figures in 1978, and that is what, 26 years ago, so we have

never been in this territory before, and if we continue to keep the Australian

economy growing, we should be able to remain in this territory. I think we could

even go lower…

JOURNALIST:

How low?

TREASURER:

…if we were to reform Australia’s labour markets.

JOURNALIST:

Does it concern you that the rate has gone up for a couple of months in a row?

TREASURER:

I have always said that the unemployment rate bounces around, whether it is

5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.4, there is no great precision in that. The critical thing

is that it is below 6 per cent and it has been there for 11 months, and that

tells you that the unemployment rate has moved down a notch.

JOURNALIST:

Treasurer, will the Government be releasing a MYEFO during the election campaign

like you did last time?

TREASURER:

We may do, we may do.

JOURNALIST:

Will that depend on the timing of the campaign?

TREASURER:

Probably.

JOURNALIST:

Are you satisfied with Telstra…

JOURNALIST:

Would you care to elaborate?

TREASURER:

Well, would you like to know the election date?

JOURNALIST:

Yes.

JOURNALIST:

Treasurer what do you make of Telstra’s 20 per cent increase in annual

profit?

TREASURER:

Well I think all Australians would like to see Telstra as a profitable company.

There are millions of Australians that hold shares in Telstra and they want

to see good dividends and good earnings in relation to their shares and I think

they will welcome the fact that Telstra is posting dividends. There is a lot

of self-funded retirees that rely on Telstra to pay the rent and pay the food,

and I think that is a sign of a successful company.

JOURNALIST:

Do you think those profits would be higher if Telstra wasn’t in Government

hands?

TREASURER:

I couldn’t actually say what the profit of Telstra would be, but I would

say this to you, that you can have a private company and you can have a government

owned company. And we know how a private company operates and we know how a

government bureaucracy works. What I don’t understand is how you have

a half-pregnant government bureaucracy or turned around the other way, a half-pregnant

private company. And that is where Telstra is at the moment, stuck in an unsustainable

position. That status has to be resolved, one way or the other.

JOURNALIST:

But it is doing well in this position though.

TREASURER:

Well, is it? You know, Telstra, has millions of Australian private shareholders,

it has to account to them, and then it has this one huge shareholder and it

has to account to it, and I think it has conflicting mandates. And I think that

its status has to be resolved one way or another from a Government point of

view.

JOURNALIST:

This has been the latest of a series of quite good economic numbers, there

has been a lot of business confidence up, retail sales up. Is the economy looking

better now than it was at Budget time?

TREASURER:

I think the economy is looking now very much as we forecast at Budget time.

At Budget time we forecast a growing Australian economy, and I think we are

looking at a growing Australian economy which is now well into an expansion,

yet it still has low inflation and it is still creating jobs. And we haven’t

been in this territory for a long time. Maybe we were in this territory in the

late sixties, but Australia has not, ever since the damage of the Whitlam Government,

we have not been in this territory. You know, we are now getting back to the

kind of economic results we used to get pre-Whitlam. And it has taken us a long

time to recover from the damage of the Whitlam Government. And the mistake for

Australia would be if we made the mistake of the late sixties, if we sat back

and we said, we can all take it for granted now, this is some kind of lucky

country. We have to continue working and we can’t afford to make the mistakes

that were made in the early seventies when you saw the election of the Whitlam

Government. Thanks.