Business, Unions Back Australian Stimulus Package

The Newspoll in the Australian newspaper found conservative support fell by four points to 42 percent over the same period.

Australia's key business group and the nation's unions backed the government's A$42 billion ($28 billion) economic stimulus measures on Monday and urged parliament to pass the package as soon as possible.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the new spending on Feb. 3 to help the country avoid slipping into recession, but the package is stalled in parliament's upper house Senate, where the conservative opposition has vowed to vote against the measures.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the country's national employer organisation, said the package was an appropriate mix of immediate spending and longer-term investment and should be passed.

"We consider it is in the national interest for those measures to be passed, and passed quickly to avoid uncertainty and promote confidence," the chamber's Greg Evans told a parliamentary hearing on Monday.

His comments are a blow to the opposition Liberal Party, the chamber's usual political ally, which has followed the Republicans in the United States in opposing the size of the stimulus and has called for tax cuts rather than cash payments.

The Australian government is proposing A$12.7 million in immediate cash payments to give the economy a quick boost, and A$29 billion for infrastructure and building projects to help support the economy over the coming 18 months.

A new opinion poll on Monday found overwhelming public support for the government move, with the stimulus measures giving the centre-left Labor Party a huge boost in support to 58 percent from 54 percent in mid January.

The Newspoll in the Australian newspaper found conservative support fell by four points to 42 percent over the same period.

But leading economist Warwick McKibbin, who is a member of Australia's central bank board, backed the conservative stance and said the cash payments should be scrapped for now to give the government options if extra stimulus was needed in future.

"The current package is too large at this stage of the global economic slowdown," McKibbin, professor of economics at the Australian National University, told the inquiry.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), which represents Australia's union movement, backed the spending measures, saying the money was needed to help Australia head off rising unemployment.

"In recessions, unemployment rises fast and falls slowly in the subsequent recovery. The critical task now is to limit the increase in unemployment. We still have a chance," the ACTU's Grant Belchamber told the parliamentary inquiry.

Australia's unemployment rate remains at 4.5 percent, with job losses from the global downturn so far confined mainly to the finance and resources sectors, although the government expects that figure to rise to 7.0 percent by June 2010.