Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McLachlan for his question. There is no doubt that the economy is still recovering from COVID-19 and, as the Prime Minister has said, there is still a long road ahead. In fact, when you look at some sectors, such as tourism and aviation, they are still facing significant challenges. But, when you look at JobKeeper and the purpose of the JobKeeper payment, it has kept and it continues to keep so many businesses in business and so many Australians in jobs. In fact, the RBA has said JobKeeper saved at least 700,000 jobs, and, if it weren't for the JobKeeker payment, the unemployment rate in Australia would have been five percentage points higher. That's right, five percentage higher.

With the recovery now underway, what we're now seeing is that fewer businesses are actually in need of JobKeeper. That said, of course JobKeeper continues to support the sectors of the economy that do need it the most. Following a retest of business eligibility for the second phase of JobKeeper, for the two JobKeeper fortnights in October around half a million entities had applications processed, covering more than 1.5 million employees or eligible business participants. The preliminary data indicates that around 450,000 fewer businesses and around two million fewer employees qualified for JobKeeper in October as opposed to September. These preliminary October JobKeeper figures suggest an improvement on the 2020-21 budget assumption of 2.2 million recipients for the December quarter, with around 700,000 fewer employees or eligible business participants covered by the payment in October, due to their employer no longer needing the payment.