Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The best form of welfare is a job. That's what those on this side of the House believe, and I believe that's what Australians believe. I want to commend all of those Australians who are on Newstart now who are looking for a job. Our government will not rest until we get all of them into jobs, because that's the pledge we made at the last election: 1¼ million new jobs over the next five years. That comes on the back of 1.3 million jobs created since we first came to government.

I'm asked about the rate of Newstart. $555 a fortnight. But, on average, an additional $130.50 is paid per fortnight to Newstart recipients, and some 99 per cent, I am advised, actually receive payments over and above Newstart. I'll tell you what I won't do when it comes to Newstart in this place: I will not engage in the unfunded empathy of the Labor Party. I will not go out as the Labor Party did at the last election, pretending they're going to do something about Newstart but not telling Australians how much they're going to increase it by, how much that is going to cost and how they are going to pay for it. I won't do that. Our government has set priorities on investing in health, in schools, on education, on mental health, on combating the terrible curse of suicide in our country and on supporting our veterans. We have made those choices about priorities rather than increasing the size of the welfare budget.

At the last election, the Labor Party came up with $387 billion of higher taxes, and they still couldn't come up with a way to fund an increase in the Newstart allowance. I will not allow the Labor opposition to go out and make all sorts of promises to Australians about Newstart when they have no intention of funding it and no intention of backing it up with a real policy.

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