Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Brian from Lugarno is 54 and had worked for Dnata for more than a decade before being stood down on minimal hours earlier this year. Like thousands of other Dnata workers, he was excluded from JobKeeper, and because of his age he's blocked from the hiring credit. Why has this Prime Minister made life harder for Australians like Brian during the worst recession in nearly a century?

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

I thank the member for Werriwa for her question. Her message, like the message from those on this side of the House, is that the government has provided an unprecedented level of economic support to help Australians get through this crisis by effectively building a bridge to the other side. If you look at where effective unemployment was in this country, you see that it got as high as 15 per cent, and today it's down to 9.4 per cent. We have seen 446,000 jobs being created in the past four months. Consumer confidence has been up for 10 weeks straight as of yesterday. Consumer sentiment today is up for the third consecutive month. Our AAA credit rating has been reaffirmed. And we heard from the Reserve Bank of Australia that the government is on the right track. If you look at our performance as a nation, both on the health side and on the economic side, we have outperformed nearly every other country in the world.

We understand that there are still many Australians who are doing it tough. That's why we put in this budget a series of economic measures that will continue to support the Australian economy. That's why we are helping the private sector to make more investments, because that, again, will increase economic activity—with the expanded instant asset write-off, with the loss carry back measure and with tax cuts for more than 11½ million Australians, with indeed more than 71,000 of those in the honourable member's own electorate. And we've extended the JobKeeper payment for another six months, out to the end of March, again supporting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer will resume his seat. The Manager of Opposition Business on a point of order?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a point of order on direct relevance. In the case of Brian from Lugarno, who's just been spoken about, he works at Dnata; he's ineligible for JobKeeper. The government's commitment to JobKeeper cannot be relevant. It cannot be relevant to his situation. He's been deliberately excluded from it.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the Treasurer, I say to the Manager of Opposition Business that the Treasurer has been able to range widely up until this point because of the final sentence of the question, which was very general, about why the government is making it difficult. That's why he's been able to range widely. But, specifically on this point, I think he's gone as far as he's able to go.

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

Mr Speaker, I'm simply making the point that the unprecedented level of economic support is helping to create more jobs and helping to get more people back into work, including in the member's own electorate. This government will continue to have Australians' back and just yesterday made another announcement about additional support for the JobSeeker payment at a cost of $3.2 billion. We will do what it takes to support Australians getting back into work and getting to the other side of this once-in-a-century pandemic.