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

I thank the member for Higgins, my electorate neighbour and friend, for that question and note her deep experience before coming to this place as a paediatrician, as a professor and as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. She, like others on this side of the House, understands that 2021 will be quite different to 2020. That was a year like none other. We were staring into the abyss of a double-digit fall in economic growth and potentially a tripling of the unemployment rate. Through the hard work of our health professionals on the front line and 25 million Australians, we have been able to get this virus under control. With the incredible and unprecedented economic support from the Morrison government, the economic recovery is now well underway.

I can inform the House that today consumer confidence is up again—up 16 out of the last 20 weeks. I can inform the House that today the ABS put out payroll jobs data which shows that jobs are up in every state and territory for the fortnight. I can inform the House that yesterday job ads were up 5.3 per cent over the year. We have seen the unemployment rate fall to 6.6 per cent, with 50,000 jobs having been created in the month of December, more than 70 per cent of which were full time, and 320,000 jobs having been created over the last three months.

I take the interjections from those opposite, because we have been working to create 320,000 jobs, and they have been—

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