Mr McMULLAN —My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. How does the Prime Minister justify his claim that 11 months—and now virtually 12 months—is not sufficient time for a new government to begin to reduce unemployment, given that the last new federal government elected in Australia, the Hawke government, took only eight months to establish a clear downward trend in the double-digit unemployment which he left behind?

Mr HOWARD —I will continue to make the assertion that it is the greatest exercise in presumption in Australian politics for a group of people who ran the affairs of this country for 13 years, drove unemployment to a post-Depression high of over 11 per cent in the early 1990s, left us with about 8½ per cent unemployed and a youth unemployment rate of close to 30 per cent, to then, with righteous indignation, bang the dispatch box and say, `How shocking, how outrageous. You haven't fixed it in 12 months.' I don't think the Australian people are listening to you and, as George Campbell rightly said, `You don't know what you stand for. You don't know where you're going.' You demonstrate day after day in this place how right the judgment of the Australian people was 12 months ago this coming weekend.