Thank you, Speaker, I am sure the Premier would have preferred the opportunity to respond, but the great honour befalls me. We are not going to take any lectures from those opposite about honouring commitments. Remember, it was those opposite who promised Victorians they were not going to build an east–west road. They then cheated and defrauded the Victorian public and went about in an effort to ensure that Victorians did not even get a say on whether or not it was delivered. They wanted to sign Victorians up to enormous levels of debt with no rights for Victorians to become involved.

When it comes to the question at point and tackling unemployment, those opposite prove themselves to be an oasis of incompetence. While the previous Bracks and Brumby Labor governments proved themselves to be the job-creation engine of the nation and while this government is going about creating an enormous amount of job growth, let us look at the comparative performance, because comparison only really gives us a sign of how truly incompetent they were. They grew unemployment by 44.2 per cent whilst in government, but they grew employment by a small 3.6 per cent. In four years under those opposite the unemployment rate was above the national average 37 times, and they come into this place and they try to lecture us about job creation.

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The question was about jobs and job creation, and believe me the answer to the question is that our Back to Work scheme in all its facets will play its part in creating the jobs that we committed to — 100 000 jobs. Let me give an illustration. We inherited an unemployment rate of 6.7 per cent. And the coalition itself created half of the jobs that Labor did. We brought this down to 6.2 per cent. That is something those opposite would not understand — an unemployment rate that is coming down. Victoria has the second-highest employment growth of all the states — 1.9 per cent in simple terms. It is the second-best performance of all the states — 45 700 new jobs. And that is an outstanding performance in anybody’s language. Even the dolts on the opposite side, who tried their hardest to burden Victorians with an underperforming economy because of their underperforming approach and concern, would have to acknowledge that our performance has been outstanding.