Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. We've just heard how much he likes statistics. The government said it would have four million vaccinations done by the time JobKeeper is cut this month. Why has the government delivered 10 per cent of vaccinations but is delivering 100 per cent of the JobKeeper cuts?

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

The member for Rankin didn't bother to listen to the answer and got chucked out, and the member for Fenner didn't bother to listen to the answer and got chucked out, so the third batsman is trying his luck. The reality is more than 200,000 vaccines have been delivered across the country. We have always said that, when it comes to JobKeeper, it will go to the end of March. Initially JobKeeper was a six month program, and we extended it for another six months. Now 2.7 million Australian workers have graduated from JobKeeper, but, when JobKeeper comes to an end, there are other support measures put in place by the Morrison government, which are designed to create jobs, including tax cuts—$9 billion already and another $12 billion to go. Infrastructure projects have been brought forward. There are 340,000 training places and apprenticeships have a great subsidy of 50 per cent, which has already been oversubscribed in the first five months. These are programs designed to continue to create jobs across the economy. We've seen the unemployment rate come down. We saw 88,700 jobs created in February, and they were all full-time jobs. We'll continue to do everything we can to support the Australian economy at this difficult time.