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                <p>SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia's upcoming budget will forecast 500,000 new jobs to be created in two years as the country rides a mining boom, bringing unemployment down to 4.5 percent, Treasurer Wayne Swan said Sunday.</p>
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Swan said secure employment was the first responsibility of the Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the budget to be delivered on May 10 would have that as its central emphasis.</p>
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"What I can say about the budget is that we will see the creation of an additional 500,000 jobs in the next couple of years, with an unemployment rate coming down to 4.5 percent," Swan told Channel Ten's "Meet the Press".</p>
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"We are going to... get more Australians into work and we are going to spread the opportunities of the boom."</p>
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Swan gave no details on how this would be achieved in Australia, which currently has an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent.</p>
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"We are looking at a range of initiatives to lift workforce participation," he said. "With an unemployment rate coming down at 4.5 percent we do not have a person to waste."</p>
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The Treasurer acknowledged that despite the mining boom, joblessness was unacceptably high in some parts of the country and the government was looking at a range of incentives for employers to bring people into the workforce.</p>
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The government has warned that the upcoming budget will be tough as it attempts to bring it back into surplus by 2012/2013.</p>
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Swan said cuts were necessary, particularly because of a short-term weakness in the economy caused mostly by natural disasters such as the devastating floods and destructive cyclone Yasi which struck earlier this year.</p>
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