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

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the fact that after the hiring credit amendments, protecting job security, were supported by every single non-government senator, the government voted for the bill in the Senate in its amended form. Today the Prime Minister has changed his position, preventing the timely passage of the bill. Why is the Prime Minister so determined to protect a loophole that attacks job security?

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

The JobMaker hiring credit will create jobs and support some 450,000 jobs. The question for the Labor Party is: what have they got against the creation of new jobs? The member for Rankin knows all too well that there are a number of protections in this legislation, including protections about additionality, in terms of both payroll and head count. There are also protections with the Fair Work Act, and there are also protections against contrived schemes. The member for Rankin may also be aware that the unemployment rate today for people aged 15 to 34 is 10.2 per cent. This compares with an unemployment rate of 4.7 per cent for those aged 35 to 44 and an overall unemployment rate across the country of 6.9 per cent. I never thought I'd see a Labor Party pitting young workers against old workers. What we are focused on is getting younger people to work, because we understand the experience of Australia in previous recessions, when it took a long time to get those from the unemployment queue into work and it took even longer to get younger people from the unemployment queue into work. The JobMaker hiring credit, together with the other measures in our budget, will create nearly one million new jobs. Our focus is on creating jobs, more jobs and even more jobs, and the JobMaker hiring credit is determined to do exactly that.