Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister look at extending the JobKeeper wage subsidy beyond September, as suggested by the Reserve Bank governor?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Rankin for his question. I too enjoyed that profile piece in The Weekend Australian on his leadership credentials, but maybe not as much as the Leader of the Opposition!

The reality is, as the honourable member knows, the Reserve Bank governor said that it is actually too early to tell what the state of the economy will be in a number of months, but what he did say is that the economic support that the government has been providing has been very, very substantial and making a real difference in helping to keep people connected to their employer and staying in a job. We've announced that we will be doing a review over the course of this month, and the outcomes of that review into the JobKeeper program and the assembly of the data will inform decisions that the government will take about the future of that program, and any announcements around the future of that program will be made on 23 July, when the finance minister and I provide an economic and fiscal update.

The JobKeeper program has been saving lives and protecting livelihoods. It is helping millions of employees and hundreds of thousands of businesses right across the country. But what I do know is that, at a time of need, because the economy was in a position of economic strength, because we had balanced the budget, because we had provided substantial tax cuts and got people off welfare into work, we were in a position to support the Australian economy with some $260 billion, or over 13 per cent of GDP, which is massive macroeconomic support, in the words of the OECD, and has seen Australia perform remarkably well not just on the health front but on the economic front as well.