Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

In the last five months we have seen some 650,000 jobs recreated across the Australian economy. This has been a result of the types of measures that our government has put in place to give the economic stability and lifeline that Australia needed. The senator referenced the OECD and their different analysis in her question. Mr President, if you want to look at the global comparisons, you see that economic growth in Australia did indeed in the June quarter contract by seven per cent. However, if you look across comparable nations, we saw that in Germany it contracted by closer to 10 per cent, in Canada by closer to 11½ per cent, in the US by more than nine per cent and in the UK by more than 20 per cent—

Senator Gallagher interjecting—

I hear Senator Gallagher say, 'Well, that's comforting for the Australians who've lost their jobs'. As I said in the primary question, we acknowledge this is difficult for many people, but this is a global pandemic we are responding to and our government is applying unprecedented support to get Australians through it— (Time expired)