Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): The State of the Nation Report takes into account our response to COVID-19, and clearly shows unemployment and hardship assistance has increased during the global pandemic. However, due to a robust economic response, we are doing better than we first anticipated, and in December 2020 the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) forecasts for those on main benefits were revised down. Through investments, employment programmes, and more front-line staff, we have seen increases in proactive employment engagements, with 28,139 proactive engagements last month, and in the December 2020 quarter we saw 27,000 exits off benefit into work. That was a 43.4 percent increase on the December 2019 quarter. We accept that we've got more work to do, but even during these challenging times we are seeing positive signs of progress.