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

I thank the member for Higgins. It was good to be with the member for Higgins last week visiting many of the small businesses in her electorate. Can I also acknowledge former Prime Minister Rudd, who is in the chamber with us today and this week as we mark the anniversary of the Closing the Gap statement, which the former Prime Minister delivered from this very dispatch box. We commend him, as we do each year, on that very significant contribution at that time.

Our economic recovery plan is working. Today we've learned that the unemployment rate has fallen again. It has fallen to 6.4 per cent from 6.6 per cent. What that means is that 59,000 full-time jobs were created in January. The underemployment rate declined further to 8.1 per cent. That is the equal-lowest level it has been at since June 2014. This now means that not 80 per cent of the jobs have come back from the COVID-19 recession; 93 per cent of the jobs lost during the COVID-19 recession have come back. That means 813,600 jobs have been added in the past eight months. Pleasingly, women have taken up the majority of those more than 800,000 jobs. I'm sure the member for Higgins and those small business owners in her electorate are very pleased, like so many around this country.

It is welcome news to all Australians to see Australians back in jobs, and that is building confidence in the comeback in the Australian economy. That has been building month upon month upon month. It's particularly pleasing because in January, as we all know, we went through the next transition, the next gear change, on JobKeeper and JobSeeker. When that occurred we saw 59,000 full-time jobs added to the Australian economy. The Australian economy is getting back up on its feet and can have confidence that it will continue to receive support—whether it's instant expensing initiatives, the overly successful HomeBuilder program or the work we're doing in manufacturing to build that up for the longer term. Tax cuts are helping 11 million Australians around the country, as well as small business. Over $250 billion is sitting on the balance sheets of households and businesses, which will continue to flow through the economy as that confidence builds. The economic recovery plan is working. The comeback in Australia is well underway.

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