Let's stay Stronger Together our Treasurer tells AWU

13 November 2009

Australia has earned the respect and regard of the global community for how our people have responded to the biggest challenge to the living standards of working people around the world, since the Great Depression.

Australia's economic performance is the envy of the world, thanks in part to our unions

And union members across the country have played a big part in this success the Treasurer Wayne Swan told around 300 Australian Workers' Union delegates in Sydney today.

" Our economic performance is the envy of the developed world and that's partly because of your actions, because of your leadership, and because of your commitment," Wayne Swan told the Annual Delegates Conference of the Greater NSW Branch.

AWU motto Stronger Together important to our national ethos

" Despite all the difficulties and all the challenges imposed on us, we begin the long road to recovery with the strongest growth of the advanced economies and with the lowest debt and deficits.

" There has never been a time where your union motto has been more important to our national ethos and to what I do in my own job as Treasurer.

" I've always really admired your words, Stronger Together, as a wonderfully concise and meaningful statement of principle.

" It is a timeless sentiment and during the white knuckle ride of the last 18 months it has taken on even greater meaning, because nothing in my political life has demonstrated it as well as our response to the global recession has," Wayne Swan said.

Swan speaks to AWU delegates hours after landing back in Australia, completing key global meets

The Treasurer went to Bankstown to speak to the AWU delegates only hours after landing back in the country after 8 days of meeting with his G20 counterparts in Scotland, then to Indonesia for bilateral discussions, then at some important infrastructure engagements at APEC level in Singapore.

The Australian Workers' Union has been fully behind the Rudd Government's infrastructure spending as a key strategy to help us get through the global financial crisis.

AWU-Auspoll survey backs Government commitment to continued stimulus spending

Recently the AWU released an AWU-Auspoll survey which clearly showed that working people want the Government to maintain its commitment to spending taxpayers dollars on backing Aussie jobs,. 

Wayne Swan outlined to the NSW AWU delegates the pretty stunning facts and figures behind the stimulus and infrastructure spending which has delivered the extraordinary results for Australia:

• The fact we're expected to grow 1½ per cent this financial year when other advanced countries are struggling to grow at all;

• The fact that all the growth in 2008-09 and 2009-10 will come from stimulus - without it, there'd be no growth in either year;

•  The fact that stimulus is saving 200,000 Australians from joblessness; and

• The fact our unemployment rate of 5.7 per cent is the second lowest in the developed world.

Some tough times still ahead but AWU members know we can be Stronger Together

The Treasurer said he didn't want NSW union delegates to go away with the impression the tough times are already behind us but he felt Australia and the Rudd Government was up to the task.

" Our economy has shown it is stronger than other countries because our workers are stronger, our unions are stronger, and our resolve is stronger as well.

" I'm going to try and ensure that these are now the things we focus on because it will best encapsulate what it means to be as the AWU says all the time: Stronger Together."