"Of course the program has only been in place for 12 weeks but we already have 82 young people who were quite literally looking at a lifetime of welfare, well, guess what, as a result of the Turnbull government's PaTH program, these 82 young people are now in employment."

BuzzFeed News asked Cash's office whether it was correct that just 82 out of 1,200 people in the program (about 7%) found employment.

In the meantime, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Ged Kearney issued a press release and held a media conference to rail against the new retail internships, stating: "The government has admitted that only 15% of PaTH internships have resulted in real jobs."

When asked where the 15% figure came from, the ACTU pointed BuzzFeed News to an article published in the Herald Sun earlier on Monday morning.