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

Speaker, you've just heard the Treasurer say where our investment is going that has led to the increase in the debt, and right now that's $200 million every single day to support Victorians through the biggest challenge they've seen in generations. It's there to ensure that businesses have been able to stay in business. It's there to ensure that Australians have been able to remain in their jobs. Were it not for the investments that we've put in place throughout this crisis, 700,000 additional Australians would have been out of work—700,000.

So, if the opposition is looking for a reason as to why the government has gone into unprecedented spending to get Australia through this crisis, he need look no further than those 700,000 Australians he scoffs at with this question. He scoffs at the Australians who have been supported by a government who gets it—a government that understands that, in the most unprecedented crisis in 100 years, a health pandemic, the government would step up to support businesses, to support industries and to keep people in jobs with cash-flow assistance.

And it's not just for today, and it's not just for the recovery tomorrow that will recover what has been lost through this crisis. It's the investment we make for the future, whether it's the manufacturing plan which the minister for industry had the opportunity to speak to this parliament about today: $1½ billion, building on the economic reforms that will make manufacturing businesses competitive in this country, but also the $1.9 billion which the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction is putting into new technologies to ensure that not only do we have affordable energy and the gas for the feedstock that this country needs to grow manufacturing businesses and to grow heavy industry, but also to ensure we have a lower emissions future.

See this speech in context