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

We absolutely acknowledge that there is a particular challenge with youth unemployment. That's why in the budget last year we put in place the JobMaker Hiring Credit as a policy proposal specific to younger Australians, and those opposite decided to come in and vote against, filibuster and make difficult the implementation of the JobMaker hiring credit.

We put that measure in place because we looked back at the advice around previous recessions and we knew that younger people in a recession were more likely to find it harder to come back into the workforce than older people. The evidence is actually proving that to be the case, justifying the policy decisions that our government took. As we've always said through this pandemic, the responses we want to put in place will be targeted and they'll be proportionate. That's precisely what we've done in relation to youth unemployment. The JobMaker hiring credit is there to help target additional support for young Australians, because we knew that that's where it would be needed.