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

What we expect to see, and indeed what the Treasury secretary, whom you just quoted, has told parliamentary inquiries is that he expects to see continued recovery in relation to the employment market and that he expects to see that continuing post the end of March.

I know those opposite seem to think that somehow there is a bottomless pit of taxpayer money and that forever and a day we might be able to run the types of subsidies, supports or otherwise across the Australian economy. However, that is just not feasible. The Australian economy and private sector businesses cannot be run on borrowed dollars and taxpayer dollars forever. The measures we've put in place have got us through the depths of the pandemic. We've taken different transitional steps and, in those different transitional steps at the end of September and the end of December, those opposite said the sky would fall in and it didn't. Employment continued to grow and unemployment continued to go down, and that is what we're going to continue to work towards.