Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Farrell for his question. I don't have in front of me the specific figures that Senator Farrell has quoted, but I will take those at face value as Senator Farrell has articulated them. I would observe, as I understood his question, that they relate to the jobs profile in Australia in 2020, which is characterised by being completely uncharacteristic of any previous year in living memory—that is, a work, jobs and economic environment completely struck by a global pandemic in which Australians and, in fact, the international community found their lives disrupted, workplaces disrupted and whole economies disrupted. What this government did, and continues to do, was to seek, through a number of initiatives—including additional payments, additional JobSeeker payments, JobKeeper itself and, ultimately, the development of the JobMaker Plan—to ensure that as many workers as possible were supported in the workplace and that as many workers as possible who unavoidably lost their jobs due to the pandemic were also supported as best as possible. That was an extraordinary undertaking by this government in 2020, one of the most significant investments of funds in Australia in anyone's living memory or lifetime. So a number of jobs to which Senator Farrell has referred obviously returned in a different manifestation than they previously had. That's correct. But what the JobKeeper statistics now show is that the economy is improving and, indeed, that Australia has gone ahead of many other major advanced nations, with a larger proportion of Australians who were in work before this crisis still in work today. (Time expired)