Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance) (14:14): Senator Conroy may think that the strength of the Australian economy is a laughing matter. It is not actually a laugh matter. This is about growth and jobs and better opportunity for people across Australia. When we came into government we were confronted with a weakening economy, rising unemployment and a budget position that was rapidly deteriorating. Of course, what Senator Dastyari would know if he looked at Labor's last budget is that, by the end of June 2015, the unemployment rate was lower than had been anticipated in Labor's last budget. He would know that the Reserve Bank governor has clearly outlined that the unemployment rate is forecast to be lower than had been anticipated. Why is that? Because employment growth in Australia is stronger than what it has been. In the economy, we have had more than 335,000 new jobs created since we came into government, and 19,100 on average a month. That is more than four times as many as the last year of Labor in government. What I would say is that the growth rate and the unemployment rate are what are called lag indicators. Senator Wong: Oh, right! Senator CORMANN: Senator Wong can laugh as much as she likes. They are lag indicators. We inherited a very bad trajectory. We inherited that trajectory after Labor put more and more lead into our saddlebag: the mining tax, the carbon tax, more than 21,000 new pieces of red tape, the fiasco in terms of live exports—you name it. What did we do? We took the lead out of our saddlebag. We made sure that Australia's economy was more competitive. We know the cost of doing business and making sure that we are more productive. Let me say: if we had stayed on Labor's bad trajectory, economic growth in the last quarter would have been worse. We are now in a stronger position than we would have been if we had not done all of the work that we have done implementing our economic plan for stronger growth and more jobs. If we had stayed on Labor's bad trajectory, Australia would be in a much weaker position now. We are now in a stronger position than we would have been, if we had not been implementing our plan.