Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It really doesn't take long. The truth is that six million Australians are benefiting from a JobKeeper program that is being shouldered by taxpayers to the tune of more than $20 billion a month. And on top of that there is the expansion of the jobseeker program, with the effective doubling of the jobseeker payment, which has seen almost 1.2 million additional Australians being able to get that additional payment with the COVID supplement. Those almost 1.2 million claims were processed by Services Australia in a period of about six to seven weeks—a set of claims which would normally be done over a two-year period. The government responded to the anticipated blow that would come from the COVID-19 crisis to Australia. This day—an incredibly difficult day for Australians, with almost 600,000 jobs lost in just one month—was a day that this government anticipated. We moved quickly and acted to ensure that both the JobKeeper and the jobseeker programs would cushion the blow, as a result of the decisions that we took as a government. Australians can continue to rely on that support from our government, because we ensured that we put Australia in a place where, when this crisis hit—

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