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

I thank the senator for her question—perhaps a repeat of the question I received from Senator Polley under a different guise, but thank you very much for your question. Once again I would reiterate that a decision taken by government—and this is giving you a bit of a lecture about how budgets work—to increase the amount of funding that is available to the economy must only be considered as an increase. For instance, in the budget, there was $507 billion worth of measures included to support Australia as we come out of the COVID pandemic. Two days ago, the Prime Minister and I announced another $3.2 billion. That means that there is $510.2 billion, which is $3.2 billion more. So you cannot possibly say that it is not an increase in spending.

What I would say is the really positive news, and the reason why we have been in a position to be able to work with Australians to put the right balance in place between providing elevated levels of support—recognising that the economy is still only in the early stages of recovery and that the jobs market remains shallow. That is why we made the decision to extend the supplement to support Australians. Over the last four months, 450,000 jobs have been created. Of the 1.3 million jobs that were lost in the early stages of the pandemic, 750,000 have come back. We are seeing the economic recovery start and we are seeing positive moves in the jobs market, but we also understand that Australians do need continued elevated levels of support. That's why this week the Prime Minister and I made the announcement to extend the coronavirus supplement for a further three months, along with all those other changes and enhancements that we will leave in place for those three months.