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

I thank the member for Bass for her question. The member for Bass is a former mayor of George Town and a farmer and very strong advocate for the people of Bass. The Prime Minister and I recently had the opportunity to go and join the member for Bass at Hillwood Berries in the member's electorate and to meet with the Dornauf family. Hillwood Berries is a family run business that employs 45 people. They are expanding their 40-hectare berry farm to over 50 hectares, with the advantage of the immediate expensing provisions that we put in the budget. It's a project that they said will help create more jobs, and that they would not have undertaken for up to another two years but for that immediate expensing provision.

The economic plan for Australia to create more jobs was laid out in the budget just a couple of weeks ago. That was an economic plan that has already seen half a million jobs be created since last October's budget and Australia be the first of any major advanced economy in the world to see more people employed today than there were at the start of the pandemic. And that plan includes tax cuts for more than 10 million Australian families. That plan includes immediate expensing provisions to allow businesses to write-off new plant, equipment and machinery. That plan also includes a 10-year, $110 billion infrastructure pipeline. That plan also includes $2.7 billion for 170,000 new apprentices. That plan will help create another 250,000 jobs. We saw the unemployment rate come down to 5.5 per cent, even with the end of JobKeeper. It showed the resilience in the Australian labour market, with 33,800 new full-time jobs being created.

While we on this side of the House had faith in the resilience and strength of the labour market and the ability to end JobKeeper, which was an emergency payment, the other side of politics, those of the other side of the House, wanted to keep extending that emergency spending measure. The member for Rankin, using his crystal ball, said that cutting JobKeeper:

… will have diabolical consequences for workers and small businesses, and the jobs that people rely on to feed their loved ones.

The member for Rankin thought there would be famine across Australia with the end of JobKeeper. Then you had the Leader of the Opposition, who said that the end of JobKeeper was the 'only support that was keeping the economic roof from crashing down'. The only thing that came crashing down with the end of JobKeeper was the Leader of the Opposition's economic credibility, or whatever he thought he had. The reality was that it was an emergency payment. It helped save millions of Australian jobs, but it had to come to an end. We held firm and brought it to an end.

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