Federal govt stands by its jobs promise January 2, 2014 - 4:44PM The federal government has rejected claims by the opposition that it is doing a "con job" on Australians by promising to create one million jobs. "It was a con job on the Australian people," Mr Bowen said. But Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the government was already working towards achieving its goal of creating one million jobs by working on scrapping the carbon and mining taxes, and reducing red tape costs for businesses. He said the Labor party was "dishonestly" using an analysis of its last budget to predict the future performance of the coalition. "The economy we inherited was an economy growing below trend, with unemployment rising and with the budget in a mess," he said. We are working to turn that situation around. Senator Cormann said there were always external factors to consider such as the Australian dollar, but the government was "sticking" to its election commitment, and accused Labor of trying to stand in the way of that promise. Mr Bowen said blaming the previous Labor government was not a good excuse.