Talk about economy too negative: Gillard

17 Feb 2012, 2:02 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Prime Minister Julia Gillard agrees with the head of Treasury that discussion about the economy has become overly negative.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard agrees with the head of Treasury that public discussions about the economy have become too negative.

Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson said on Friday the national mindset was a "bit overdone".

"It's almost as if most Australians tend to think we live in Greece. We don't," Dr Parkinson told a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra on Friday.

Ms Gillard agreed, saying that in the past two weeks in federal parliament the opposition had talked the economy down, even though new data showed unemployment was falling.

"More Australians are in work today than ever before," she told reporters in Canberra.

"There are Australians facing change in challenging times, but more Australians are in work today than ever before is a remarkable result."

She said this was at a time when literally millions and millions of adults and young people overseas were unemployed.

Dr Parkinson also said there were two ways to manage the transformation in the economy, either by thinking about the sorts of industries that needed to be created, or by trying to hold on to industrial structures that "the world in a sense has passed by".

Ms Gillard said the government always analyses very closely how it is going to work with industry and would not prop an industry that didn't have a future.

For example, she thought the car industry had a "great future" in Australia.

"We are one of a precious few nations on earth that can do everything from designing a car, to making it and seeing it roll off the production line," she said.

"We need to keep skills in our economy like that because they support the rest of manufacturing."

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