Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Herbert for serving in the Australian Defence Force and for being a champion on mental health issues, on veterans' issues and on infrastructure. More than 70,000 taxpayers in the member for Herbert's electorate are getting a tax cut as a result of policies supported by this side of the House. And around 4,000 businesses in Herbert have been benefiting from the JobKeeper program.

The member for Herbert, like other members on this side of the House, understands that the Australian economy has faced its biggest hit since the Great Depression. It saw a reduction in quarterly growth in June of seven per cent. This compared to a fall of around 12 per cent in New Zealand, 14 per cent in France and around 20 per cent in the United Kingdom. But the economic comeback is on!

Mr Husic interjecting—

I'll take the interjection from the member for Chifley: we welcome his comeback too! But it is not as impressive as the Australian economy's comeback, because what we have seen is consumer sentiment up by 4.1 per cent this month and we've seen four consecutive months of consumer sentiment rising. Bill Evans, Westpac's chief economist, said that consumer sentiment has fully recovered from the COVID-19 recession.

Yesterday we saw business confidence up, and we've seen strong jobs growth. We've seen 80 per cent of the 1.3 million Australians who either lost their jobs or had their working hours reduced to zero at the start of the pandemic back at work, and 178,000 jobs were created last month. The effective unemployment rate has reduced from 14.9 per cent to 7.4 per cent. In the month of October, we saw two million fewer Australian workers on JobKeeper compared to the month of September. They may be workers in cafes in Sturt. They may be crane drivers in Lindsay or cakemakers in Reid. We have seen, right across the country, businesses graduating from JobKeeper and workers no longer needing that income support. We also saw, in the September quarter, 3.3 per cent GDP growth here in Australia, which means that, year on year, the Australian economy is performing better than France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and New Zealand. The economic comeback is on. Australians are getting back to work. It's still a tough road ahead, but the efforts and the policies of the Morrison government are making a difference for the better.

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