Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support these important measures in the substantive bill, which are in the national interest. We all know that we are facing not just a health crisis but an economic one. Australians have been impacted in ways which we would never have imagined, and we continue to adapt to it. Australians are resilient. We are strong, and we have been the envy of the world when it comes to the way that we have dealt with the twin economic and health crises.

Though we would never have been able to foresee such a crisis as COVID-19, through sound economic management we did go into this crisis with a strong budget position and, because of that, with the best possible opportunity to support Australian workers and businesses. It has enabled the government to act swiftly and put in place measures that helped and continue to help protect families and businesses from the severe economic impacts of COVID-19. As this crisis hit, I, like many of my colleagues, spent every minute I could speaking to my constituents, hearing their concerns, giving them the latest advice and assisting them in any way that I could.

In those first few weeks, some of the toughest calls I took were from local small businesses: from tradies, from coffee shops and from gyms. They'd all been impacted, some of them forced to shut down entirely. They knew it would not be something that would simply pass in a matter of weeks, and they very quickly had to adapt and be resilient. For these business owners, despite having their livelihoods impacted in some of the most dramatic ways under the COVID restrictions, their No.1 concern whenever you spoke to them on the phone, particularly in those early days as everything was unfolding very quickly—and this is to their absolute credit—was: how do I pay my staff? One business owner said to me: 'I support so many families. I have to pay my staff. I cannot let them down.' That is the epitome of the Australian spirit and what our small businesses mean to our local communities.

The Prime Minister and the Treasurer heard their concerns and, in March, a historic wage subsidy program was introduced in the form of JobKeeper. As the Prime Minister said as he announced JobKeeper:

We will give millions of eligible businesses and their workers a lifeline to not only get through this crisis, but bounce back together on the other side …

Importantly, unlike other furlough schemes that we have seen across the world, our JobKeeper program focuses on keeping that connection between employers and employees. When the economy comes back—and it will, and we will all be here to work together to ensure it does—these businesses will be able to restart again at full pace and their workforces will be ready to go because they will remain attached to the businesses through our JobKeeper payment.

On this side of the House, we have always shown that we will do everything we can to support Australian jobs. The JobKeeper payment showed Australians that this government has their backs. And, as a way to keep people in jobs, JobKeeper has been enormously successful. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been supported and retained because of the JobKeeper payment. Unlike Labor members opposite, we on this side of the chamber don't just talk about supporting workers and jobs, we live it and we do it—we get on with the job. And that's what we've done with JobKeeper. That is what this government does through strong economic management.

See this speech in context