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

If you have to ask what the cause of the economic impact in the September quarter was then, clearly, you don't understand much about how the economy operates. The cause was very clearly the lockdowns that occurred across the country. That's evident from the fact that the dominant factor in relation to the downturn was the decline in household consumption. Unsurprisingly, household consumption declines when people are living under lockdown restrictions. But we know that the rebound is strong. We know that because the ABS payroll jobs data shows 350,000 jobs coming back from September already—350,000 jobs coming back in that short period of time. We know that Australia's global performance, as I said before, is, on the three-year growth, from the depths of the pandemic, in the top 3 in the world. Those opposite can seek to select a narrow band of time, but we have the demonstration and the evidence that Australian jobs and— (Time expired)