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

When we announced JobKeeper, at one of the most difficult times this country has seen for decades, the country was looking into the economic abyss like so many countries around the world. People didn't know whether they would be able to go to work the next day or, indeed, whether they would ever see work again. The very day we announced it, the number of people who it was intended would be given notice that they would not be coming back to work—I've heard the stories from all around the country. When we announced it, it had many purposes. Of course, it was to provide income support that was necessary on a scale that Australia has never had to engage in before and to effectively marshal the private sector payrolls of this country to deliver a level of social security income support we had never seen before. It was a great partnership between the government, private sector employees and, indeed, Australia's financial institutions and the banks to enable that level of economic support, to provide an injection of confidence that was so desperately needed. And we made a deal with the employers of this country. We said, 'We are going to provide this support for companies going into this situation and it will be there for six months.' That's what we put in this place. We made that promise and Labor voted for it. We said we were going to stand by this economy and those businesses, and we made that legal. We did that together.

What I hear from those opposite now is they want to change the rules afterwards. They want to change the goalposts. They want to shift the mark. They want to have it each way. They want to support JobKeeper and they want to oppose JobKeeper. This is a constant theme of the Leader of the Labor Party. We made that commitment—

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