Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Scarr for that very important question. The budget we delivered last night was indeed our plan to get Australia out of the COVID recession and to get Australians back into jobs—jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs. We are focused on saving the jobs that need to be saved. We are there to restore the jobs that were lost. We are there to create more new jobs, but it will be a private sector led recovery.

On this side of the chamber, we understand that jobs don't grow on trees. On this side of the chamber we understand that jobs are created by viable, successful, profitable, growing businesses. That is why in our budget we have taken a whole series of very important measures to ensure that businesses have the best possible opportunity to be successful into the future and to grow, because we know that a growing business will hire more Australians. If you look at the measures that we've taken since the start of the COVID pandemic, there's been $507 billion worth of fiscal support, 25.6 per cent of GDP in support of the Australian people and our economy. This budget alone provides $74 billion worth of support measures as part of our JobMaker plan to drive the strongest possible private-sector led economic recovery and to drive the unemployment rate down, which will be good for the economy, which will be good for the opportunity of working families around Australia to get ahead and which will be good for our budget and for budget repair into the future, because, of course, more people in work means more revenue for government from income tax. It means lower payments on welfare support for jobseekers, which, of course, is what we are focused on. That's what we've achieved in the past, and that's what we'll work for in the future.