BENSON: Penny Wong, good morning.
WONG: Good morning, Marius. Good to be with you again.
BENSON: Thanks indeed for joining us. There was a general sense of surprise at those numbers yesterday. Did you share that?
WONG: They certainly are remarkable numbers, arent they? As you said, 1.3 per cent for the quarter, 4.3 per cent for the year theyre significantly above what the market anticipated, and theyre really a testament to the resilience of the Australian people. This is a figure that shows were a resilient people, a resilient economy, and even in a year when weve seen a lot of doubts and global uncertainty were continuing to grow, and grow much stronger than anticipated, and certainly far stronger than most of the rest of the world when it comes to the developed economies.
BENSON: But we seem to be a bemused people at the same time because these are retrospective figures showing the first three months of the year growing at that rate, and everyone looked around and said, Really? Are we doing that well?. A lot of people dont feel like theyre doing that well.
WONG: There is no doubt about that Ive often said that people look around and say This isnt my mining boom. Wheres the boom?, which is why in the Budget as youll recall the Government did ensure we put in place some measures to deal with peoples cost of living pressures, including the SchoolKids Bonus, which you and I have discussed before an additional payment for parents of children at primary and at high school. So we understand that this is not everyones boom, and weve got to keep doing the work were doing to spread the benefits of the boom as far and as wide across this nation as we can.
BENSON: Whats your answer to a question that Joe Hockey put yesterday, saying that if things are so good, why are you handing out all this cash which is raining on households right now?
WONG: I think Joe was probably scratching around pretty hard looking for something bad to say yesterday. I think he and Tony Abbott were probably the only two people who were disappointed with the fact that the economy actually grew as strongly as it did. Ive actually answered that question already we think, unlike the Coalition, that mining companies should pay their fair share of tax. And we also think that as many Australians as possible should share in the benefits of the boom, and we are doing that through our Budget and through the additional payments to low and middle income Australia.
BENSON: A big issue, a big economic issue, for a lot of households right now is waiting for the banks to make a decision on interest rates. They dont appear to be in any hurry to do so. Is there anything the Government can do apart from jawboning the banks? Do you have anything up your sleeve in terms of encouraging people to change banks when theyre unhappy, as youve already done?
WONG: What weve done is improve the settings for competition in the banking sector. As you know Marius, governments dont regulate interest rates, and thats because in the past when thats been done thats constrained the supply of credit. So thats not been good for Australian families. I think banks need to do whats right for their customers. They need to come out and tell people what theyre going to do and I think their customers would expect a full pass through of the rate cut that weve seen. Remember, this is not the first rate cut; we had a couple of rate cuts prior to the Budget and a rate cut after the Budget, which confirms what the Governments been saying we want out Budget settings to give the Reserve Bank the flexibility to move should it wish to do so.
BENSON: Unemployment figures out today. A general expectation that your boast of being under five per cent wont be maintained, that it will go over five per cent today.
WONG: I dont think weve been boasting. Those figures of 4.9 per cent are quite extraordinary and they were unexpected. In our Budget we anticipate some softening of the labour market still at very low levels and still seeing jobs growth. It would be very unusual to maintain that particular figure for a lengthy period of time.
BENSON: Penny Wong, thank you very much indeed.
WONG: Good to speak with you Marius.
ENDS