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

At the risk of repeating myself for the 456th time today—I might call a point of order on myself for repetition!—the fact is that the economy is starting to open up. We are starting to see jobs come back. Our jobs figures are showing that more jobs are being advertised, more jobs are being created and more people are able to go back to work. In fact, in the May figures we saw that we had 1.6 million people on payments, and at the end of October we saw that we had 1.5 million people on payments. That is way too many people on payments, and we don't shy from that. That is why we've extended the supplement to help those people through what is a tough time. We most particularly want to help them in their pathway back to employment, and that is why the supplement remains in place. But we do need to balance the difference between making sure that there are elevated levels of support to help those people and, at the same time, putting the incentives in place because it's our job to help people back to work.