Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Marko from Hobartville is 53 and a qualified fitter whose work dried up about a month ago. He says he has been a victim of the government's illegal robodebt scheme. Marko is cut out of the hiring credit scheme and he isn't eligible for mature worker subsidies yet. How is Marko meant to get ahead when government policy is making it harder for him to get a job?

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

As the honourable member knows, the Morrison government has announced a record $507 billion of support—both balance sheet support and direct fiscal support—designed to create jobs across the country for members and constituents in that electorate, whatever their age. The JobMaker hiring credit is focused on those aged 16 to 35 because, as I said to the House prior, the unemployment rate for those who are aged 15 to 34 is 10.2 per cent, but for those who are aged 35 to 44 the unemployment rate is 4.7 per cent. Look back at Australia's experience with previous recessions, and particularly the 1990s recession. It took a full decade to get the unemployment rate back below six per cent from where it started, but for younger people it took a full 15 years to get the unemployment rate back below the levels from which they started prior to the recession.

We will continue to implement and to legislate the announcements that we made in the budget. Announcements such as the tax cuts, the expanded instant asset write-off, the research and development incentives and the loss carry-back measures are all already legislated, and the JobMaker hiring credit was legislated last night. They are all about doing one thing, which is creating jobs across the honourable member's electorate and, indeed, the electorates represented by all of those in this House.