Mr HOGAN (Page—Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) (15:30): I can only imagine how disheartening it must be to be in opposition, to never be able to see the positive in anything. We're talking about the plan that the government has had for Australia. When we've talked about almost anything today, I've wanted to take us back to last February-March, because that's when the world changed. The world literally changed last February-March. The world was hit by a global pandemic. So, what have we done as a government since then in terms of a plan for Australia? We had a plan that covered two very distinct issues. We had a plan to keep Australians safe. You would think, if you listened to the opposition, that we are in dire straits with the pandemic as far as the health and safety of Australians are concerned. Well, that isn't the case. You would also believe, if you listened solely to the opposition, that we have great economic problems combined with the pandemic. That again is not the case. I want to take you back to last February-March when the global pandemic was declared. I want to take you back to when we, as a government, formed a national cabinet with the state premiers and the territory leaders about how we were going to combat this and what we needed to do, as both state and federal governments, to keep Australians safe and to keep their job security as solid as we could. What happened? The Treasury back then, way back at the start of this, said that their projections were for a 15 per cent unemployment rate, for two million extra Australians to be unemployed and for our economy to contract by 20 per cent. They were the Treasury's projections if we, as a government and state governments together, didn't do anything. So, we had a plan. We implemented a plan. We also— Ms Murphy interjecting— Mr HOGAN: I'll take the interjection. It was a very cunning plan and it's worked! It was a great plan! Ms Murphy interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Llew O'Brien ): The member for Dunkley is warned. Mr HOGAN: So, instead of having an extra two million unemployed, instead of having a 15 per cent— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The minister will pause for a moment. Member for Dunkley, if you think it's humorous when I give you a warning under 94(a), you'll be leaving the chamber. Ms Murphy interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The minister has the call. Mr HOGAN: Humorous! I'm glad that the member opposite thinks that it's funny that we've done so well. That's great! The projections of the Treasury were that there'd be two million extra unemployed, that the economy would contract by 20 per cent and that there would be a 15 per cent unemployment rate. Together we had a plan to resolve that, and we did—and I'm glad the member opposite is so amused by that. We had a mantra as well at the time that it was very important that we—as did every country—had to flatten the curve. Remember that? We had to flatten the curve. That was the pre-eminent thing that the people of every nation wanted. Well, we did. We did flatten the curve. We did better than most countries in flattening the curve. In fact, this virus is still sweeping the globe, through developing nations and other countries, which are having third and fourth waves. We can't ever eliminate a virus. We still have the odd outbreak, which obviously is unfortunate, but comparatively as a country we have done very well. As a comparison, if our health stats had been a lot like other countries, 30,000 additional Australians would have passed away. So, we have done exceptionally well. Unfortunately you hear nothing positive from the opposition. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that no-one over there is ever in a happy place on anything. While Labor MPs may not be able to say anything positive, I have Labor voters in my electorate who compliment us and say: 'We might not vote for you, Kevin. We might not think that you're our first port of call when we go to vote, but we think you and the government have done a great job.' I hear that from Labor voters. You never hear anything like that from anyone opposite, but you certainly hear it from Labor voters and people out in the community. Because we have done so well to date—and that hasn't stopped—on the health front, economically we are absolutely blitzing it. We are absolutely doing exceptionally well. We are the Ferrari on the track as far as the economics of the world go. So, rather than have 15 per cent unemployment, the unemployment rate peaked at 7½ per cent. It's 5½ per cent now and forecast to go below five per cent. Isn't that exciting? I see the smiles opposite, joyous about the fact that unemployment rates are falling. Join in the celebration of that, members opposite! Join in the— The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will direct his comments through the— Mr HOGAN: celebration of that! Crack a smile about that! The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The assistant minister will direct his comments through the chair. Mr HOGAN: Deputy Speaker, crack a smile about that. The fact that the unemployment rate has fallen from 7½ per cent to 5.5 per cent and is going to fall to below five per cent by the Treasury projections is great news. Also, there are the national accounts throughout this week. The Australian economy is the first economy out of any G7 nation to be bigger than what it was pre-pandemic. Our economy is now bigger than what it was before the pandemic broke out and everyone went into a COVID led recession. We have more jobs in our economy than what we had pre-pandemic before the global recession hit. We are up by 0.8 per cent, so our economy is 0.8 per cent bigger. Here are some relative international statistics: the US is down by 0.9 per cent, Canada is down by 1.7 per cent, Japan down by 2.3 per cent, France is down by 4.7 per cent, Germany is down by five per cent, Italy is down by 6.4 per cent and the UK is down by 8.7 per cent. The whole of Australia celebrates that except for those opposite. They don't talk about it and they don't mention it, because nothing of a celebration or good news can come out of their mouths. Because the economy's doing so well, we've also seen business confidence and consumer confidence up. Why have we done really well economically? One of the reasons—and God bless the Australian people in adhering to social hygiene, social distancing and all the health restrictions that were put on them—is that we as a government know that eight out of ten jobs are in the private sector, so we needed and we wanted the private sector to do well and to get to the other side of this pandemic as best it could. JobKeeper has been very well documented. JobKeeper was a very important economic stimulus that took us through a whole 12-month period when businesses had to close down or were restricted in what they did. That was a very important part of it. It kept the relationship between an employee and employer together and obviously when the economy took off again that relationship was still there. We're providing tax relief to over 10 million Australians. A tax cut is the same as a wage increase, so, effectively, the Australian people have had a wage increase. Someone from our side of politics would mention this every day this chamber sits, and that's the instant tax write-off. I know the Deputy Prime Minister spoke about it in question time today. This is that scheme where businesses are investing in capital in their business—if you're a cafe, you go out and invest in a new freezer, and, if you're a tradie, you go out and buy a new ute. We've extended it to big business and some of the big capital programs that they have. You could instantly write that off. Anecdotally, if any of us walk around the small-business communities in our own regions, you would not have a small business who doesn't mention that one to you and know the importance of that. We had the carry-loss-forward provisions as well, which were really important to improving both small and large businesses' cash flows. Cash flow is exceptionally important through this period, which is why our unemployment rate has fallen and why we economically are doing very well. We also have on the other side of the ledger realised, besides JobKeeper, the importance of government spending in a whole array of areas. In the budget we saw some really big commitments to some really important areas of our economy, which is the plan that we have and the plan that is working. There was the increased commitment to aged care. We saw in the royal commission that there were some vacuums in our aged-care system that needed to be filled and some shortcomings that we needed to help them fix. The investment in that is there. We talked about, as well, the $110 billion dollar infrastructure project that we have planned over the next 10 years—really important on a whole array of fronts. If I had time I would go through a whole array of them in just my own region. There are lots of others, but I am going to run out of time. There's increased funding for mental health; increased funding for apprenticeships and traineeships; increased funding for clean energy projects; increased funding for the NDIS; and increased funding for child care. So there's lots of spending going on there. We have seen also the vaccine rollout. There were disruptions to supply at the start of that from Europe, but we see the numbers are back and we are now hitting record numbers as hundreds of thousands of Australians are getting vaccinated every week. I believe there is no better place in the world to be right now on the health and economic fronts than Australia. (Time expired)