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

One of the things that we probably need to be a little bit careful about in here is when we elaborate, conflate and inflate with flowery adjectives what somebody had said. However, I did say that $40 a day is not all of the support that is provided to people who find themselves on working age payments and that the comprehensive and targeted nature of our welfare system enables people to receive additional supports that relate to their particular circumstances. But, in relation to the principal part of your question—which was very much the same as the question I was just asked by Senator Pratt and spent some time going through—the reason we put the $550 a fortnight coronavirus supplement in place in March was that, on 23 March, the Australian economy closed down. It just completely closed down overnight. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs overnight, completely unexpectedly. No-one could have foreseen what was about to happen to the Australian economy. Nobody knew what was about to happen over the forthcoming weeks. And so, by putting that payment in place, the government sought to recognise that there were no jobs. Even if there were jobs, no-one could go to work because of the shutdown and the lockdowns. So we put in place a blanket for Australia, to cushion the period of uncertainty. This was so we could get to the other side of that uncertainty and so we could make some decisions in relation to how we would put in place ongoing supports for the Australian economy.