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

I thank Senator Chandler for her question. When the Treasurer earlier today was updating the Australian public on the national accounts, this is what he actually said:

The road ahead will be long, hard and bumpy. But the Australian economy has demonstrated its remarkable resilience …

And it actually has. Today's accounts show that the Morrison government's economic plan is helping to create jobs, it is helping to boost our economic recovery and it is helping to secure Australia's future. As the Leader of the Government in the Senate said, we have now seen GDP growth in the third quarter return to positive territory, growing by 3.3 per cent.

This is reinforced by the latest labour force figures for October, which show that, with a further easing of restrictions across Australia and businesses being able to reopen their doors, jobs are returning to the economy. In fact, the labour force figures for October show that labour market conditions across Australia continue to recover, with employment increasing in October by 178,800 jobs over the month. When you look at what the market expectations were versus what the employment growth actually was—178,800—it far exceeded market expectations. When you look at the breakdown of those jobs, full-time employment increased by 97,000 jobs. This is the largest monthly increase on record. Part-time employment rose by 81,800 jobs. We also saw an almost one per cent increase in the participation rate. So Australians are putting up their hands and they are saying, 'We want to go back to work.'

But this didn't happen by accident. This happened because of the strong policies that the Morrison government put in place— (Time expired)