Press Conference, Adelaide

AMANDA RISHWORTH, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS:    The labour figures released today shows the ongoing resilience of Australia's labour market in March, with 14.7 million Australians employed. The unemployment rate in March stayed steady at 4.3 per cent, and we saw an extra 18,000 jobs added to the Australian economy. 

Of course, these figures capture only the beginning of the conflict in the Middle East and we know that this global uncertainty will have an impact on the Australian economy. But what this data shows is that we have entered this period of global uncertainty from a place of strength. 

Now, the key things I wanted to point out about the March figures include the following: First, underemployment remains low, which means Australians, in March, were getting the hours that they wanted. Participation in March remained high and, of course, the number people in work in March was also at a record high. We also have the total number of hours worked in March also at a record high. As I noted earlier, this data does reflect only the beginning of the conflict in the Middle East, but shows that the Australian labour market was resilient in the month of March and our labour market and our economy is going into this time of global uncertainty from a position of strength. 

Our Government has taken practical measures required to shield Australians from the worst of this conflict, and we will continue to work to ensure that we're creating jobs and increasing wages. And I might take questions. 

JOURNALIST:     Have you received any advice on how - obviously you said that this was a capture, well, just at the start of the Iran conflict - has the Government received any advice or any information about how the global conflict will affect the next round of unemployment figures? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    I'm not going to make any predictions about what the April figures will show. I would say that my department is monitoring a range of different information sources. And what we do know, of course is that there concern from both businesses and households about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. 

Some of the information we have to hand, though, is that as of today, our labour market does remain resilient. What we do know is that job ads remain relatively stable, and that people entering the Workforce Australia program which supports people to find jobs, is at normal levels. I'm not going to make predictions into the future and we will continue, of course, to monitor the situation. 

And the ABS data today does show an important thing - going into this conflict, our labour market was incredibly resilient. We had low unemployment at 4.3 per cent. And I would add another piece of data here - in the year to March, we have seen a quarter of a million jobs added to the Australian economy. So, looking at where we were as we entered this time of global uncertainty, the Australian labour market was coming from a real position of strength. 

JOURNALIST:     How does the Government expect this job starter to impact the RBA's next meeting? Is there any advice on that? 

AMANDA RISHWORTH:    I would say this unemployment figure of 4.3 per cent is consistent with the RBA's information and predictions that they had in February, and so it is in line with expectations from the RBA. Apart from that, I'm not going to make any predictions about the RBA.