Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I can. What a great and important question by Senator Slade Brockman. Congratulations on your appointment to the Senate and your first question. The Turnbull government is pursuing a pro-growth, pro-opportunity, pro-jobs agenda. We are pursuing an economic agenda which supports free enterprise and reward for effort and which encourages people to stretch themselves to work hard in the pursuit of opportunity and success. All of this is underpinned by an appropriately generous and well-targeted welfare safety net which looks after those in need of support.

Our policy agenda is all about achieving equality of opportunity for Australians to get ahead, not equality of outcome. Our focus on growth, jobs and opportunity is delivering. The ANZ job advertisements index showed another strong result in August, increasing by two per cent, the sixth straight rise. The number of job advertisements in August increased to more than 181,000. Those opposite are not interested. That is 13.3 per cent higher than last year, and it's the highest level of job ads in over 6½ years. Employment also has continued to grow, increasing by two per cent over the past year, stronger than the average rate of the past decade of 1.6 per cent. This year over 240,000 new jobs were created. The most recent monthly jobs statistics show that full-time jobs growth over the last six months was the strongest in almost 40 years. In fact, since we came into office in 2013, 736,500 new jobs have been created, compared to just 201,000 new jobs over six years of Labor.

Businesses aren't just employing more people; they're also paying them better wages. Recent ABS data shows that the amount earned by Australians in the June quarter rose by 1.2 per cent, the strongest rate of increase since 2013. (Time expired)