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

It is surprising to get a question from the member for Rankin on the issue of real wages, when real wages to the December quarter were higher than when Labor left office—higher than when Labor left office!

The reality is that the key to driving higher wages is a tighter labour market with more people in work. This is an inconvenient truth for the member for Rankin, who always seeks to make politics in this chamber rather than acknowledging the national interest. But half a million jobs have been created since the last budget. In the MYEFO in December last year, Treasury were forecasting an unemployment rate of 7½ per cent in the March quarter, and today it is 5.6 per cent.

We announced in last night's budget significant measures to invest more in infrastructure, more in skills, tax relief for families, business investment incentives and childcare reforms to drive greater workforce participation. They are all designed to make our economy stronger. The measures of the Morrison government have been targeted and designed to get more people in work. We knew that we had to transition in last night's budget off emergency support measures like JobKeeper. You know that the member for Rankin was begging us to continue spending more than $2 billion per month on JobKeeper, but we held firm. The good news for the House is that, since JobKeeper ended, around 120,000 Australians have come off income support, which is a direct pointer to the resilience and the strength of the labour market.

The member for Rankin described what Australia went through last year as the deepest, most damaging recession for almost 100 years. The fact that Australia is now recovering strongly, ahead of the global pack, is something that we can all know that the Australian people have helped achieve. It's not the result of luck, because Australians make their own luck.

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