Household wealth boost for Aussies

29 Jul 2012, 4:20 pm   -   Source: AAP

The average growth of household wealth jumped by more than 20 per cent over a six-year period compared to US households which declined by 30 per cent.

New Treasury data shows average household wealth jumped by more than 20 per cent between 2004 and 2010.

Treasurer Wayne Swan has linked the increase to the government's stimulus in response to the global financial crisis.

In comparison, median household wealth in the United States declined by more than 30 per cent in the same period.

"Contributing to this was our stimulus response to the GFC, which protected hundreds of thousands of jobs, as well as our decent social safety net and government policies that spread opportunity," Mr Swan wrote in his economic note released Sunday.

Mr Swan said Australia, like all countries, had not been immune from the impact of global turbulence in recent times.

"This was clear in the Budget papers in May, which showed $150 billion wiped from government revenues since the onset of the global financial crisis," he said.

"Australians have also seen the impact on their household wealth.

"This is obvious not only in the performance of people's superannuation accounts in recent years, but the more cautious attitudes towards debt that have contributed to the softness in house prices."

Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb attacked the government for taking the most optimistic forecasts available to develop its budget.

"The budget was predicated on everything going well around the world," Mr Robb told Network Ten on Sunday.

"The fact is even the budget papers indicated that for every four per cent change in the terms of trade you are talking about a $7 billion increase in the budget deficit."

Our terms of trade were 50 per cent higher than average compared with the 1980s and 1990s and commodity prices were coming off far more than anticipated, Mr Robb said.

He pointed to BHP Billiton considering shelving its Olympic Dam expansion and Royal Dutch Shell throwing $17 billion worth of LNG projects into doubt.

"Half the pipeline that Mr Swan brags about has not reached Final Investment Decision and probably won't," he said.

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