Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia—Minister for Finance, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:06): The government has always been honest that, in dealing with a global pandemic, with a crisis of unprecedented proportions in terms of its economic impact right around the world, tragically not every job or every business would be able to be saved from the disruption that has occurred. The actions, however, that we've taken have delivered a remarkable outcome for Australia by saving jobs, saving businesses and, indeed, ensuring our economy is firmly back on track and progressing in a direction that we want to see for its recovery. Today we welcome the release of labour force figures that show yet again a decline in the unemployment rate in Australia. The figures show that in January the unemployment rate fell— The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Birmingham. Senator Gallagher, on a point of order? Senator Gallagher: My point of order is relevance. I'm sure that today the government will have the opportunity, through dorothies, to go through the job starters, unless they surprise me. But my question was specifically about job losses, and the minister hasn't come to that. How many will be lost when JobKeeper ends? The PRESIDENT: Senator Gallagher, I have allowed you to restate the final part of the question. The question and the quotations did refer to jobs and the labour market. With respect, I think the minister is being directly relevant by talking about jobs. I can't instruct him how to answer a question. Senator BIRMINGHAM: 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. The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Birmingham. Senator Gallagher, a supplementary question?