Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Families and Social Services, Senator Ruston. Can the minister update the Senate on her recent meeting with international counterparts and how Australia's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic compares to other countries?

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

Thank you very much, Senator Askew, for your question around a really important meeting I held this week. Internationally, I have been speaking with a number of my counterparts overseas. This week I spoke to my social services colleagues in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, so that we could discuss our social policy responses to this once-in-a-generation, once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-century coronavirus pandemic. It was tremendously informative and productive to be able to discuss the issues that are, temporarily, facing just about every country in the world and to speak to them about the plans they have employed to date and the plans that they intend to employ going forward. Of course, as we come out of the health crisis, we now have to work out how we are going to recover from this pandemic and transition to what will be a new normal.

We're all facing shared challenges, and all ministers said that, whilst our primary focus had been, of course, to put things in place as quickly as possible to address the needs of people, now is the time for us to start discussing how we might assist our countries and the people in our countries to get back onto the other side—how to get our workforces stood up again but, at the same time, make sure that we continue to support the people of our countries.

The United Kingdom and the United States have, very much, focused their packages so far on supporting people in employment situations and making sure that they retain their connection to the workplace. Likewise in Australia, and also in Canada and New Zealand, we've coupled that with not just working with people in the workforce but also making sure that we put additional supports in place for people who find themselves without work. Given the fact that this pandemic has affected every country in the world, we thought it was very important that we shared experiences so that we can, hopefully, get through this pandemic better.

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Askew, a supplementary question?

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can the minister advise the Senate of what transitional support arrangements are in place in other countries?

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

All ministers who were at the meeting are currently grappling with the transition phase and how they will deal with the support packages that are in place and how best they can reopen their economies, support people who continue to be impacted by this pandemic through hardship, and ensure that we maintain control of the spread of the virus.

Amongst our international peers, Australia is regarded extraordinarily highly, and they were all very interested to learn that we'd made the decision that we would extend the level of additional support that we are putting in place for people who are unemployed and that, in addition, the JobKeeper payments we going to be continued until March. Canada advised that their emergency response benefit is set to end in October and their emergency wage subsidy will finish in December. New Zealand announced that their income relief payments will end in November and their wage subsidies in September. In the UK, job retention and income supports will end in October and the United States announced that all their measures were set to end on 31 December.

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Askew, a final supplementary question?

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, how will you continue to work with your international colleagues as the world manages the COVID-19 crisis?

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

We will continue to work together and we will continue to share ideas with other countries as we move into the recovery phase. At the meeting, we all agreed that we would continue to share information. That is critical for all of us in our ongoing recovery—the world's recovery and our individual countries' recoveries—from COVID-19.

In addition, our officials all have agreed to continue to meet on a regular basis and to work through the challenges and discuss how me might plan to overcome them and make sure that we're learning from each other. Clearly, learning from each other will also offer us the opportunity to share with other countries the learnings that we've found to be helpful to us here in Australia. We are committed to continuing to monitor the situation as it unfolds, because we know that the best way to be able to respond to this is to remain extraordinarily agile. I have agreed to continue to meet on a regular basis with my international colleagues. Can I please put on the record my thanks to Ministers Hargan, Davies and Hussen and Sepuloni for taking the time to partake in these valuable discussion.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.