JO MCMANUS:
Now without further ado. Let's go straight to the line and speak with Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Treasurer, good afternoon and welcome to Perth Live.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Lovely to be with you, Jo.
JO MCMANUS:
Thanks for your time this afternoon. I've got a couple of questions for you, but first of all, what do you think is the most salient points out of this mid‑year review?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, the first thing to say is we've got job numbers today as well for the month of November, and we saw 366,000 jobs created. That was the strongest jobs growth for a month on record. And we saw around 60 per cent of those jobs going to women and around a third of those jobs going to young people. The unemployment rate for the country fell to 4.6 per cent. Bearing in mind that when we came to government, it was 5.7 per cent. And what's particularly pleasing is that there now are 180,000 additional people in work compared to where it was at the start of the pandemic. We've actually had the strongest labour market recovery in the world through this pandemic. And that's a credit to everyone across the country. We also had our mid‑year economic and fiscal update. And what that focused on was how not just the stronger labour market but stronger growth numbers, stronger investment numbers, stronger household consumption numbers are driving a stronger economy. And when you get a stronger economy, you get a budget bottom line, you have more people in work, less people on welfare, more people paying tax. And that's also seen an improvement to our budget bottom line today,
JO MCMANUS:
Treasurer, one of our listeners, John, is asking you a question through me. He'd like to ask you if you're looking to cut taxes, what services are you likely to cut in order to achieve the restrictions on revenue collection?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, the first thing to say is we've increased funding for services, whether it's been disability support, with record spending on the NDIS, whether it's the age care sector. And we announced more than $17 billion for age care, whether it's hospital funding or schools funding.
JO MCMANUS:
Just, sorry I know we have limited time, Treasurer.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
We've got substantially increased services.
JO MCMANUS:
So where are you going to find money for the taxes?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, the answer to how you cut taxes as you grow the economy because putting more people, more money into people's pockets actually gives them more money to spend across the economy. Now, at the last election, Labor went to the Australian people promising $387 billion of higher taxes on your super, on your housing, on your retirees, on your income and on your family businesses. The Australian people rejected Labor's high taxing agenda, and they voted for our lower taxing agenda, which we've implemented. So we continue to look for opportunities to cut taxes, whether it's for small businesses, they now have the lowest company tax rate in 50 years, or whether it's for households where we've also focused on delivering lower taxes.
JO MCMANUS:
And I noticed in this mid‑year review that there's around about $16 billion, $15.9 billion set aside. The decisions taken, but not yet announced, is that just sort of politics speak for an election fund for the next election?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, that $16 billion that you referred to includes decisions taken not yet announced, which all governments in budget updates have included. But it also includes measures that have been announced but where the financials are commercially sensitive and therefore not for publication. So, for example, booster shots and COVID treatments, quarantine facilities, aviation support packages. Some of those actual financials are commercially sensitive that have been negotiated. So the details on the financials are not made public, but the actual measures are. So it would be wrong to conflate those two sets of issues.
JO MCMANUS:
There's been some analysis this week by the Nine newspapers about what is commonly called pork‑barrelling ‑ money going to Liberal electorates well, and above over Labor and often marginal electorates as well. What is your response to that? Because I saw the Prime Minister say when he was asked about that, when he was asked to vote as being punished for voting Labor, the Prime Minister said, I can tell you if they support our candidates, the commitments I make will be delivered. Is that saying, vote for us and you'll get it and if you vote for Labor, you won't.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, it says that we actually deliver on our commitments to the Australian people, and what the Audit Office has done is actually condemned. The Labor Party and programmes where Anthony Albanese has been the Minister in charge when Labor was last in office, where they waived the eligibility requirements to fund the projects that they wanted and that they actually saw applications from Labour electorates more than twice as likely to get approved than from the coalition electorate. So we won't take a lecture from the Labor Party, but those particular programmes that have been analysed only 11 out of 1700. So quite a selective choice of programmes that were analysed take into account, for example, community disaster drought support, which, of course, for drought support, the vast bulk of electrodes that have been hit by drought have actually been coalition electrodes.
JO MCMANUS:
Western Australia didn't get much of that, but I know we've got we're short on time.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Yeah, sure.
JO MCMANUS:
Part of the condition of this review working is that borders remain open. What happens if WA doesn't open on February 5? Will that change the numbers?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, I think it's really important that WA does open in accordance with what's been set out by the Premier. And I think people from WA and businesses from we need to go about like the rest of the country is getting their freedoms back, travelling more freely and building their businesses. We have to learn to live with COVID it doesn't seem to be going away. There are going to be new variants, and it's really important that the country opens up in a COVID safe way as those vaccination rates reach record highs.
JO MCMANUS:
Yeah, I think we're all hoping for that. And I've just got one final question very quick from Kay, one of our listeners who said when are pensioners, old age pensioners going to get something?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Oh, we've continued to provide support for pensioners, including $750 payments, multiple of those payments that are to support them. And we continue to support pensioners. And we continue to support others on income support, including carers, veterans and pensioners.
JO MCMANUS:
I know you have to go. Treasurer, we really appreciate your time this afternoon on Perth live. That's the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.