Senator SHERRY (Tasmania) (15:16): It is a pleasure to participate in this debate. It is unsurprising, on the first day of the return of the Senate, that the Liberal-National Party should continue their doom and gloom scenario predictions that the world as we know it is going to end on 1 July with the introduction of a carbon tax. It is unsurprising that they predict that the economy will collapse, that real wages will go backwards, that jobs will be lost et cetera. It is a well worn theme and a well worn scare campaign. We have seen it in other areas of major reform undertaken by the Labor government. We saw it in respect of the introduction of compulsory superannuation all those years ago. We saw it in respect of the mining tax. Where was the end of the world with the introduction of a mining tax in Australia? We all remember the doom and gloom being predicted by those opposite about the end of investment and mining employment et cetera. We all saw those arguments advanced last year. But, of course, it did not happen, and it will not be happening when the mining tax legislation comes into this place. Senator Boswell interjecting— Senator SHERRY: I am just reminding you, Senator Boswell, of the constant scare campaigns, the negative attacks and the factually incorrect campaigns that the Liberal-National Party has continued to run against all major economic and social reforms that a Labor government has made. We even had it in respect of maternity leave some years ago. Of course, we now have the Liberal-National Party supporting maternity leave. I predict that the Liberal-National Party will not be reversing the mining tax as they have promised to do. It is unsurprising that they focus on and predict gloom and doom and disaster come 1 July. Let us see what happens on 1 July. Let us see if the Australian economy goes backwards. Let us see if unemployment rises as a consequence of the carbon tax. I predict with some certainty that the disasters that the Liberal-National Party are predicting—as they predicted with the mining tax, as they predicted with compulsory superannuation in this country and as with all of those predictions that they have made—will not come true. It is unsurprising that we come here on the first day of the new sitting year for the Senate and the Liberal-National Party wants to talk about anything but the strength of the Australian economy: the fact that there have been over 700,000 jobs created in this country in the four years of a Labor government, the fact that real wages over the last four years have grown by 7.4 per cent cumulative on average weekly ordinary time earnings, the fact that the budget will be returning to surplus over the 2012-13 financial year and the fact that mortgage repayments are $3,000 a year less under this government than they were under the previous government. It is unsurprising that the Liberal-National Party wants to predict doom and gloom from 1 July when they do not want to acknowledge the economic strength of this country. I remind the Senate chamber about the economic strength of this country. It is certainly in stark contrast to what is happening in Europe and the US. We have an unemployment rate of 5.3 per cent. Contrast that to the eurozone, where it is over 10 per cent, and the US, where it is still over eight per cent. And they have massive fiscal deficits. I remind the Senate chamber of the strength of the Australian economy because, come 1 July, the strength of the economy, which has been delivered very effectively by this Labor government over the last four years, will continue. It will continue. The forecasts from Treasury show that our economic strength will continue with a carbon tax. We will continue to have good economic growth. We will continue to have good jobs growth. We will continue to be one of the strongest economies, if not the strongest of all advanced economies, with a carbon tax, just as we have been one of the strongest economies in the entire Western world over the last 20 years with a superannuation guarantee of nine per cent. And we had the doom and gloom prediction that small business and industry would collapse. We had all the same predictions, which did not come true. (Time expired)