Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Askew, for your question around a really important meeting I held this week. Internationally, I have been speaking with a number of my counterparts overseas. This week I spoke to my social services colleagues in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, so that we could discuss our social policy responses to this once-in-a-generation, once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-century coronavirus pandemic. It was tremendously informative and productive to be able to discuss the issues that are, temporarily, facing just about every country in the world and to speak to them about the plans they have employed to date and the plans that they intend to employ going forward. Of course, as we come out of the health crisis, we now have to work out how we are going to recover from this pandemic and transition to what will be a new normal.

We're all facing shared challenges, and all ministers said that, whilst our primary focus had been, of course, to put things in place as quickly as possible to address the needs of people, now is the time for us to start discussing how we might assist our countries and the people in our countries to get back onto the other side—how to get our workforces stood up again but, at the same time, make sure that we continue to support the people of our countries.

The United Kingdom and the United States have, very much, focused their packages so far on supporting people in employment situations and making sure that they retain their connection to the workplace. Likewise in Australia, and also in Canada and New Zealand, we've coupled that with not just working with people in the workforce but also making sure that we put additional supports in place for people who find themselves without work. Given the fact that this pandemic has affected every country in the world, we thought it was very important that we shared experiences so that we can, hopefully, get through this pandemic better.