Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator, for the question. As I said in the chamber here last week, the youth unemployment rate, at 15.6 per cent, is too high. That's why this government has invested so much, which we have been criticised for by the opposition, in measures to support younger Australians to get back to work. In fact, the opposition has actually voted against some of those measures in this place. We recognised that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on younger Australians was going to be significant. That's why, as we worked our way through the COVID pandemic and in the budget that we released just a few weeks ago, we had such a significant effort focused towards getting younger Australians back to work. We invested $4 billion in the JobMaker hiring credit. We invested a significant amount of money to provide a 50 per cent wage subsidy for apprentices who were starting a new apprenticeship in businesses or recommencing. We want to keep younger Australians connected with their employers, and we want to provide incentives for employers to employ younger Australians, because we know the longer term effects of unemployment for younger Australians have a significant impact on their financial capacity over a period of time—