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

My question is to the Prime Minister. The average worker will likely receive a tax cut of less than $50 a fortnight under the government's budget announcement. How will this make the millions of Australians who've just lost $300 a fortnight from their JobKeeper payments better off?

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

What you will hear tonight is, again, the government's plan for not just cushioning the blow, as we have done now for these many months, through the COVID-19 pandemic and the COVID-19 recession that has followed, but you will also hear again that it's a plan for the recovery of what has been lost and it is a plan to build Australia's economy again for the future, so Australians can indeed plan for their own future with confidence. Our plan is about growing the economy again. That's how Australians earn more. That's where Australians will find hope. Australians will find hope by finding their jobs again. And we're creating those jobs and keeping as many Australians in jobs as we possibly can. That's why we've gone through the last six months to keep people in their jobs. Now we're getting people back into jobs—some 760,000 jobs since the beginning of this crisis. Jobs that have been either lost or reduced to zero hours have come back. They've come back—some 760,000 jobs. And, as Treasury have said, were it not for the measures the government undertook, there would've been 700,000 more people out of work in this country. So, when Australians look at what the Treasurer has to say tonight, what they will hear is hope for the future. What they will hear is their jobs being more secure and the jobs that they're looking for becoming more real. That is our plan—to secure those jobs, to keep those jobs and to build those jobs for the future.

Those opposite have no such plan. Only on this side have we put out a consistent plan to grow the economy. The proof of that is the 1½ million jobs that were created, from when we first came to government up until the start of this COVID crisis—1½ million jobs created—and a budget back in the balance, so we entered this crisis from a position of strength. Had it been left to those opposite, we would've entered this crisis in weakness, and the weakness would have continued in their ill-disciplined approach.

But under this government our responses have been targeted. They have been proportionate. They have been scalable. Our government's plan has kept Australians in work, and it will keep Australians in work, and it will get more Australians into work.