GRAEME GOODINGS:
You certainly know there’s an election in the wind when the heavyweights start rolling into town. Today, it’s Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. As you heard there in the news with Mel, he’s in town. The state election is just three weeks away. Treasurer, is there any connection?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
It’s good to be here and supporting Steven Marshall. We’ll be out visiting local businesses today, but I’m also speaking to the Chamber of Commerce here in Adelaide this morning. We’ve got a great story to tell about the economic support that the Morrison Government has provided to people of South Australia, some $12 billion through the COVID pandemic, around $5 billion through JobKeeper and, of course, you’ve seen your unemployment rate come down to 4.8 per cent and the economy is $10 billion bigger since the coalition came to government. We’ve been contributing to that by investing in infrastructure projects here in South Australia, investing in skills program and, of course, cutting taxes, and that’s something that’s very important to the coalition, important to our political philosophy, important to our policy programs, and we’ve cut income taxes for around 750,000 people in South Australia and about 250,000 small businesses in South Australia.
GRAEME GOODINGS:
You’ll hand down the budget before the next federal election. The Government has had to heavily go into debt due to COVID; will you, or will the next budget rein in that spending?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
We have drawn a line when it comes to emergency economic support. We were obviously there with JobKeeper and the cashflow boost and then through the Delta outbreak. We were there with COVID disaster payments for households and also business payments for businesses that were impacted. But now that we’ve got to the point that the recovery is well underway, and that the Omicron cases have peaked and the isolation and hospitalisation numbers have come down, we can move to the next phase of our economic plan. Now, we welcome moves by Steven Marshall here in South Australia to provide other support packages to South Australian businesses; that’s welcome. But from my perspective and the Federal Government’s, we’ve drawn a line in the sand here and we’re seeking to bring back the budget and fiscal policy to normalised settings.
GRAEME GOODINGS:
What about the tax offset worth $1,080; it’s due to end in June, are you thinking of extending it?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Again, we’re looking at all our options when it comes to tax policy and broader economic settings and, obviously, we’ll have more to say about that in the budget. And I won’t pre‑empt what’s either in or not in the budget other than to say we’ve put in to LMITO, that’s what it’s called, and it was focused on low and middle‑income earners and I think it did provide additional tax relief to them at a challenging time, and that’s money that has been spent across the economy, helping to generate jobs and has been part of a very strong economic recovery.
GRAEME GOODINGS:
The nation is a trillion dollars in debt, surely, you’re going to have to plan to cut costs somewhere?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
We are seeking to ensure that the economy does get back to those normalised settings, but I do point out that in the Mid‑Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which came out at the end of last year, our deficits come down across the forward estimates, our debt peaks earlier than what we’d previously had expected and in the Financial Year 2020‑21, we actually saw an $80 billion improvement in the budget bottom line compared with what we had initially expected when I announced the budget just prior, in 2020. The reason being is that more people were in work. When there are more people in work, there are less people are paying tax and–sorry, more people are paying tax, and less people are on welfare, and that’s the magic source: grow the economy, get more people into jobs and have less people on welfare.
GRAEME GOODINGS:
Well, one area of growth is tourism. The international border has reopened, a lot of people about that.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
That’s right.
GRAEME GOODINGS:
But how long do you think it will be before those tourism numbers get back to where they were before COVID?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I can see that the planes are already starting to land here in Adelaide, and that’s got to be good news for your tourism industry, whether it’s the wineries in the Barossa and the Adelaide Hills or whether it’s the various tourism operators on Kangaroo Island and the like. You have wonderful array of tourism operators here in South Australia; they’re ready to service the tourists who come either from interstate or overseas, and I think those numbers will pick up quite dramatically as a result of the changes to our border settings. Not only are the students coming back and the skilled workers coming back, but also now international tourists will.
GRAEME GOODINGS:
On another matter Treasurer, the Government has gone on the attack against China over the laser incident and is accusing Labor of being a puppet of Beijing. What do you say to commentators who claim this rhetoric is doing more harm than good to the country?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
The first thing to say is our issue is with the Chinese Government. It’s a bilateral relationship, and it’s not with the Australian Chinese community who are very valuable members of our community. But we will call out bad behaviour when we see it, and the shining of a laser onto one of our military aircraft was dangerous, it was reckless and it could have cost lives. That’s why we’ll call that out. In the area of critical infrastructure, we’re safeguarding that from external threats. We’re investing more in cybersecurity. We’re talking about human rights abuses where we see them, as you would expect us to. And politicians and the media, all are entitled to speak their mind on these issues. The Chinese would have a different view. They would rather us be quieter on those issues. But we say what we think, particularly when it is very much in Australia’s national interests for those matters to be known publicly. And our concerns are not just concerns that are held by Australia, but there are greater concerns that are held by other countries around the world with what they see as a more aggressive behaviour, more assertive behaviour by China.
GRAEME GOODINGS:
Treasurer, I know you have got a busy day ahead of you in Adelaide; thanks for your time today. That’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in Adelaide.