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

I thank the member for Bass for her question. She knows that, whether it's in her home state of Tasmania or anywhere else around the country as we deal with the COVID pandemic that has swept the world and the COVID recession that has followed that pandemic, it's important that our response gets the balance right, constantly assessing the impacts to ensure that we're both saving lives and saving livelihoods in addressing the twin crises. As we continue to work hard together with state and territory governments across the country to suppress the COVID-19 virus across Australia, and particularly now in Victoria after the significant community outbreak there, what we also know is that we must continue to ensure that we support Australians who are doing it incredibly tough as a result of the COVID-19 recession.

In the June quarter of this year, in the United Kingdom their economy shrank by 20 per cent. There were large falls also in the United States and Germany of around 10 per cent, and, I think, some 14 per cent in France. Our figures will come out next week, and the indicators are that Australia will, hopefully, not see any of those figures. But the impact will still be significant—very significant.

But we are making progress. We are making progress in bringing Australia back and getting the jobs back. The most recent payroll data shows that 43 per cent of payroll jobs have come back, as at 8 August, since the beginning of the COVID recession after those jobs were first lost. Importantly, in the two areas that were most significantly impacted by the job losses of the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen a 52 per cent return in women's jobs that were lost and, for those under the age of 20, the comparison now with the pre-COVID period shows that jobs, on payroll data, are down by just 0.1 per cent. We have seen the jobs for under-20s, on that payroll data, come back to where they were at the start of the COVID recession.

As the numbers in Victoria continue to improve—and we look forward to more improvement in the weeks and months ahead—that will see confidence continue to rise. That is why it's important that we don't allow the country to go into some sort of economic retreat. We need the country to keep moving forward and, wherever possible, continue to open up and make sure that we can get those jobs back into our economy and we can get the businesses opened up again. It is so essential that we continue to press forward and not allow a retreat in our economic position. That is why we will continue to lead, with more than $300 billion of economic support into our economy and to support jobs. The JobKeeper legislation that is before the parliament now, extending JobKeeper again out to the end of March, is incredibly important support to the Australian people, because it keeps Australians in jobs. (Time expired)

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