Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline to the House how the Morrison government has ensured we start the year in a stronger position and explain how we will deal with the challenges Australia and the world face in 2021?

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

I thank the member for her question and for the great work she has done over the summer break with the local community. Australians have put Australia in a relatively strong position at the beginning of this year as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. As we battle it from a health perspective, as we battle it from an economic perspective and as we stand here today, Australia is among a small handful of countries that have had the relative success when it comes to saving lives and when it comes to saving livelihoods.

As we look around the world, we know that here in this country there has been that valuable time that has enabled us to move forward with the plans and preparations to ensure that we emerge from 2021, at the end of this year, even stronger again. Australians have created that space. Australians, through their efforts, through their patience, through their discipline and through their overcoming have ensured that we are in the relative position of envy of those elsewhere in the world in terms of where we stand today. But we know that the job is far from finished. The journey is still a long way in front of us as we continue that road to recovery. Our efforts to save lives and livelihoods have been effective, but they must continue along the same Australian way that we have managed to pursue over this course of this past year and we must pursue again as we go throughout this year—the targeted, proportionate approach, the way we have worked with existing delivery mechanisms, the way we have worked in concert with other arms of policy delivery, the way we have understood that emergencies are emergencies and that you then need to emerge from them and ensure that the economy can stand once again on its own two feet.

As we go into this year, we go in with five core goals. They are to suppress the virus and deliver the vaccine rollout, an unprecedented logistical effort that this country will embark on in the course of this year to again save lives and livelihoods; to continue the path of economic recovery—the comeback that has begun, the comeback that continues—and, as the momentum builds, as confidence figures and job vacancy figures—

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

Job ads.

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

job ads show, our economy will come back throughout the course of 2021; to guarantee those essential services that Australians rely on, whether they be the National Disability Insurance Scheme, aged care, veterans support or the many other areas that Australians rely on for this support; to pursue our interests in a very uncertain world; and to care for our country in the best traditions of our Indigenous Australians, who have done so for millennia.