Doorstop at Brindabella Business Park

SENATOR THE HON. ZED SESELJA, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR SCIENCE, JOBS AND INNOVATION: Welcome here to Brindabella Business Park here at Canberra Airport. It’s great to be here with Shannon, it’s great to be here with the Prime Minister and Michaelia Cash to talk about jobs.

You know we’ve seen significant jobs growth here in Canberra and right around the nation and today marks a really significant milestone, so I’ll hand over to the Prime Minister to talk about it.

PRIME MINISTER: Thanks Zed and Michaelia, it’s great to be here with you and with Shannon. Shannon, come stand here. Shannon Fairbanks is the 100,000th person that has been employed with the support of our wage subsidy scheme.
And Shannon, you were unemployed for a while – how long?

SHANNON FAIRBANKS: Oh, close to three years I was unemployed for.

PRIME MINISTER:Right, and you’re down on the South Coast?

SHANNON FAIRBANKS: Yeah, Batemans Bay.

PRIME MINISTER: Right and Total Insulation has given Shannon a start here and they’ve received an incentive from the Government to do so and he’s the 100,000th person to do so.

So Shannon is one of 403,000 Australians who started jobs, got new jobs last year and that’s because all of our policies and programmes like this, the PaTH program for young people, or the business tax cuts that are encouraging businesses to invest and grow and employ, all of those policies are supporting jobs and Shannon is one of them.

So Shannon, congratulations. We were having a good talk about it, you’ve done well mate. Fantastic.

SENATOR THE HON. MICHAELIA CASH, MINISTER FOR JOBS AND INNOVATION: Here here.

PRIME MINISTER: You’re the ‘100,000th Man’. Where’s the boss of Total Insulation? Here you are, come on now you tell us about how your business is going and what you’re doing to create new opportunities?

MR MARK STEWART - CEO, TOTAL INSULATION: It’s being going really well in Canberra at the moment. We’re trying to pick up more and more contracts so we can employ more and more people and get everyone out there working and not on the dole.

PRIME MINISTER: That's the job. You know, we have fewer people as a percentage of the working age population, on welfare now, than there have been for 20 years.
So more Australians are working, than they have for 20 years. That's a big achievement. And Shannon, you're a part of it and so are you, you're a part of it and Michaelia, what a great job you're doing as Minister for Jobs and Innovation. So, tell us a bit more about it.

SENATOR THE HON. MICHAELIA CASH, MINISTER FOR JOBS AND INNOVATION: Thank you so much Prime Minister.

Look it really is just absolutely fantastic to be here today, with my very good friend, Zed Seselja. But more than that, with Total Insulation, who put their hand up and said: “We want to give a person who has been unemployed for a long time, a go.” But in particular, to congratulate Shannon, the 100,000th Australian who has been employed as a result of the Turnbull Government's wage subsidy programme.

This really is an historic achievement.

When we say that the best form of welfare is a job, this is a Government that puts in place the right policies. We understand governments don't create jobs, employers do, employers like Total Insulation.

What our role is, is to put in place the right policies that enable businesses like Total Insulation to prosper and grow. And that is exactly what we are seeing under the Turnbull Government; the policy fundamentals are right.

And this is, of course, borne out in the jobs statistics. We had last month sixteen months of continuous calendar month jobs growth. That is a first in Australia's history.
We have a record number of Australians in employment.

In the last 12 months, the economy created - because of the policies Prime Minister Turnbull has put in place - in excess of 400,000 jobs. In excess of 300,000 of those jobs were full time jobs.

This Government and the economy created in excess of 300,000 full time jobs in the last 12 months.

Compare that to the last 12 months of the former Labor Government, where the economy actually went backwards by almost 18,000 in terms of full time jobs.
So when it comes to a Government that gets the policy fundamentals right to enable businesses like Total Insulation to prosper and grow and to give people like Shannon – who were unemployed, but want a go, want to get a job -  the opportunity to do that, that is exactly what this Government is doing.