Fiona Martin (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister please outline to the House how the Morrison government's 2021 budget will secure Australia's recovery and create a stronger economy that can fund the essential services Australians rely on?

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

I thank the member for Reid for her question. I thank her for her diligence over these past 18 months, as all members of this place have sought to do, to provide support to Australians through what has been a very difficult period in our nation's history.

Tonight the Treasurer will announce the coalition government's further plan to secure Australia's recovery. Tonight's budget will once again show how we're protecting Australia against the COVID-19 pandemic, how we create jobs and how we guarantee the essential services that Australians rely on, whether it be in aged care or in mental health or the National Disability Insurance Scheme, to build a more resilient and secure Australia in what is increasingly an incredibly uncertain world. Whether that uncertainty stems from the security of our region, the pandemic which we face or the challenging climate which the world is faced with over the next 30 years and beyond, our world does remain uncertain.

The pandemic continues to rage. This will be our government's second pandemic budget tonight. We are under no illusion that the pandemic continues to rage across the world, as it has extended from the developed world now into the developing world, as we see the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in places like India, and, indeed, as it will continue to move across other parts of the world in the months ahead. It is against that pandemic background that tonight's budget is framed.

We will continue to take responsible action to save lives and to save livelihoods, as our government has done throughout the course of this pandemic and the recession that it has caused. Through our plan to secure Australia's recovery we will to continue to bring Australia and Australians through this terrible pandemic. While moving beyond emergency responses, as we have been doing for these last 18 months, we move into the recovery phase and continue to provide the support that Australians need both to protect their lives and to protect their livelihoods.

These actions have ensured, even right now, that, compared to the rest of the world, we are living a way that the rest of the world envies, because of the way that in this country Australians have worked together, governments have worked together and the Commonwealth government has invested to ensure that lives and livelihoods have been protected. Indeed, there were 13 million Australians who were working in this country before the severity of the pandemic hit. Today there are 13.1 million Australians working, and that is after 900,000 Australians lost their jobs. More people working today than before the pandemic hit— (Time expired)