It’s more than the economy, stupid!

This week provided further evidence of the economic recovery story that the government parties abysmally failed to sell to the electorate last week.

The unemployment rate declined to 8.8% of the labour force in February and the number of people classified as unemployed has now declined by 23,400 over the past year and by 70,200 over the past two years.

Furthermore, in January, the volume of retail sales was 10.3% higher than a year ago, and the value of sales increased by 8.9%.