Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Sheldon for his question. Given the information that has just been provided to the chamber by Senator Birmingham, I think we should all be delighting in the fact that we are seeing more Australians back in work than before the pandemic. And we should all be celebrating the fact that we have an unemployment rate of 5.1 per cent today. Who would have thought, when we went into the pandemic, that the economic recovery in this country was going to be so strong as to see 5.1 per cent unemployment in Australia? In the home state of Senator Cash, who's sitting next to me, it's down to 4.4 per cent, which is getting very, very close to full employment.

Making sure that we provide a balance, and ensuring that Australians who wish to get into the workforce are able to take that opportunity, is a very important platform of the Morrison-McCormack government's economic policy. We want to see every single Australian who is able to work, in work. That's why we have put in place so many programs, particularly in recent times as we come out of the COVID pandemic. Through JobMaker we've got skilling and retraining programs to make sure that Australians who find themselves without work have a pathway back into the workforce. But we also hear—on the other side of the equation—that there are businesses that are struggling to get employees, and we need to make sure that we provide them with a pool of resources so that they can get workers. That in no way denies that our absolute fundamental policy position of this government is to make sure that Australians who are unemployed—