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

I hate to break it to the shadow minister for finance, but the measure of unemployment by the Australian Bureau of Statistics is a measure of people without jobs in the Australian economy. What we saw in January was that the unemployment rate fell from 6.6 per cent to 6.4 per cent. More importantly, employment increased by 29,100 jobs in January 2021, the fourth monthly increase in a row. This is a government that has not only quite consistently supported people through the pandemic but also acted in a way consistent with principles. We said that measures we put in place would have to be temporary, targeted and proportionate to the circumstances that are there. That's what we've done with JobKeeper. We absolutely delivered an economy wide solution at the point of the pandemic's depths. We have tapered it off and we are now, thanks to the recovery that's in place, able to move to more targeted approaches.