Hockey confident of ‘good Christmas’ for retailers 财政部长对圣诞节零售充满信心
Treasurer Joe Hockey has said he hopes the post-election consumer sentiment boost is not short-lived and he is confident “we will have a good Christmas”.
“I hope it doesn’t lose momentum,” Mr Hockey told Financial Review Sunday on Channel Nine on Sunday.
“You can see it in property transactions and property prices that there’s confidence coming back.
“When people come up to me in the street and say ‘it’s turned,’ I’m encouraged by that.”
“I am confident we will have a good Christmas, from a retail perspective and an employment perspective.”
Asked about the rebounding Australian dollar, Mr Hockey said it emphasised the need for domestic reform to make sure the nation “can deal with whatever challenge is there”.
“The more domestic reform you can undertake ... the more capacity you to have to deal with the exchange rate.”
He pledged to lay down a “growth agenda” over the next few months that will “sustain momentum in the Australian economy, despite what happens overseas”.
Mr Hockey said the Coalition would stick to its election promises as it rebuilds the budget surplus.
“We’re not going to break any promises. Let’s be clear about that.
“We will do what we have to do to repair the budget, but we will honour all our election commitments.”
Mr Hockey rejected comparison to former prime minister John Howard’s early budgets, which generated a return to surplus within a few years, whereas the current government doesn’t expect “strong” surpluses for ten years.
“We are in a different economic environment than which we were in 1996,” he said. “I was there, we were going into a period of pretty strong growth.
“I’m inheriting rising unemployment, not falling unemployment. I’m inheriting falling growth, not rising growth. I’m inheriting low interest rates. It’s a very different environment to 1996.
“Having said that we will get the budget under control.”
Speaking about Australia’s push to sign bilateral trade deals with Asian countries, Mr Hockey predicted that it would be easier to get an agreement with Japan and South Korea than with China.
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