Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Tori from Lang Lang is a primary school relief teacher engaged by an agency. Tori is pregnant. She says the Prime Minister's cuts to the JobKeeper wage subsidy will be catastrophic for her. Why is this Prime Minister cutting JobKeeper for people like Tori in the middle of the worst recession in almost a century?

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

JobKeeper is a lifeline to Australians. It has been seeing Australians through for the past almost six months and it will be extended for a further six months. This is a program that taxpayers have willingly supported, to the tune of around $11 billion every single month. As we move into the next phase of JobKeeper, what we are hoping to see is that fewer businesses will be dependent on that JobKeeper support and, in the period after that, as we get into next year, that fewer businesses again will be needing that support. What we hope to see, with our plan for the recovery and as the budget has its impact from October of this year, and with the many measures that have been introduced prior to that time, is that there will be more and more Australians who will be in a position where the companies that they work for will be able to support them with actual work and not be reliant on the economic income supports that are provided by the government. That is the goal.

That is why the transition plan is important: to ensure that our economy can move from a position of absolute supports to one where it can stand on itself, because, if you don't make that transition, the Australian economy won't be in that position to provide the support to Australians that it needs to provide. But the supports will remain, and the combination of JobKeeper together with JobSeeker will work together to ensure that the necessary income supports are in place for all Australians, as they have been from the start. We will continue to calibrate these measures, as we have always done, in response to the economic circumstances that we face. That has been one of the hallmarks of the government's response: to be balanced, to be carefully considered, to understand what can be sustained over the short, medium and longer term, and to put in place the supports that Australians need but to also ensure that, when businesses are in a position to employ again, they can do so and they can bring people on and they can bring hours back.

That's why we are pleased to see in the most recent payroll data that there has been a recovery of half the jobs that were lost by women. We've particularly seen a bounce or a return of those who are under 20 finding those jobs again. There are many more jobs still to be created and returned to Australians. That's what our plan will focus on. To do that, we cannot remain behind the constraints that have been limiting our economy to support the very people that the member refers to. Those constraints need to be lifted. We need to look forward, we need to look ahead, and we need to surge forward. We cannot hide behind this virus with our economic plan; we must defeat it by ensuring that we allow our economy to grow again and that we lift the constraints on that economy. (Time expired)