JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Today's job numbers show that the Morrison Government's economic plan is working. Employment is up, participation is up. Hours worked is up. And there are more Australians in work today than ever before. In the month of March, 70,700 new jobs were created. More than 2,000 new jobs were created every day. This is more than twice what the market was expecting. And of those new jobs, around 80 per cent went to women and around half went to young people. Australia's jobs market, Australia's labour market, is recovering 4.5 times faster than the experience of the labour market during the 1990s recession. We saw very strong consumer and business confidence numbers earlier this week with consumer confidence rising to an 11-year high. And this is another proof point of Australia's economic recovery gaining momentum. Now, there are many sectors and regions and, indeed, families across the country that continue to do it tough, and the Morrison Government's economic support will continue to flow. We were with the Australian people at the start of this crisis. We've been with them through this crisis and we'll be with them to the end of this crisis. But today's job numbers give us another reason to look to the future with hope and with confidence.
QUESTION:
Treasurer, the numbers are obviously pretty good, but they're all for March. What gives you confidence that people aren't now scrambling off JobKeeper and jumping onto JobSeeker?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, as you know, with the end of JobKeeper, we were very firm. This was a temporary program. This was an emergency payment, initially it was for six months and what we did, Matthew, was we tapered it down, we introduced a two-tiered system. That was the right thing to do. Treasury's advice to us was that JobKeeper had to come to an end because there were a number of characteristics with that program that would have a perverse impact across the economy, preventing labour mobility, people moving freely to new jobs, if we had left it in place. Our political opponents, of course, they want to spend an extra couple of billion dollars a month. Of course they want a program like that to continue to roll out indefinitely. We recognised it was an emergency payment and it had to end. Now, we will see the full impact of the end of JobKeeper over the course of the coming months. But in some of the early data that we are seeing, we are not experiencing a massive increase in people turning up to Centrelink.
QUESTION:
There's only one state where full-time employment is not back to where it was pre-COVID and that's New South Wales. It's about 60,000, 70,000 short. Why do you think New South Wales full-time is still a bit behind? And do you expect that to catch up as we go forward?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, I think the New South Wales economy has performed very well, Shane. There are swings and roundabouts in these numbers. You know it moves month to month. But New South Wales has been one state that hasn't gone into a full statewide lockdown and that's been very important for Australia's economic recovery, even though they've had outbreaks of cases, for example, in the Northern Beaches. So, I think their economy is in good shape. I think we'll continue to see strong employment growth, not just in New South Wales, but across other states as well.
QUESTION:
Has the Government decided against forcing the increase in the superannuation guarantee in the Budget?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Greg, I know you would love us to comment on every bit of media speculation about the Budget but then we'd ruin those surprises for Budget Night and we're not about to do that. I've seen lots of reports on, not just the super issue, on tax issues and other individual programs speculating about what’s in the Budget, but you'll have to tune in on Budget Night for the answer.
QUESTION:
Workers can expect by July they’ll be getting a bit more to their super?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Again, when it comes to super, my focus has been, the Government's focus has been on lowering fees. That's why we have legislation before the Parliament that is designed to bring greater transparency, accountability to superannuation funds' performance, to give Australians more choice to be more actively informed about the performance of their super funds and to be able to better choose which one is right for them. They're the reforms that we've got before the Parliament. We're also, as you know, getting rid of duplicate accounts, which is a massive increase in the fee take, unnecessarily, on Australians with super. We've also passed through the Parliament opt-in insurance for younger people with superannuation. We've capped the fees on low-balance accounts. We've banned exit fees. We've done a whole host of things when it comes to the superannuation sector that is designed to do one thing which is to generate better outcomes for Australians with super.
QUESTION:
Treasurer, the unemployment rate has rapidly fallen to 5.6 per cent. Can you afford to get a bit more ambitious on your ‘comfortably below 6 per cent unemployment’ goal before trying to steady debt-to-GDP? The RBA is talking about a number in the low fours. Can you afford to get a bit more ambitious on getting unemployment down below, comfortably below, six per cent?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
And as you know, the Secretary of the Treasury also spoke about the NAIRU when he appeared before the recent Parliamentary Committee and, again, they're also looking at a lower NAIRU than has previously been the case before. But when it comes to our fiscal strategy, I laid that out before Budget Night last year - and I said comfortably below six per cent. We're not comfortably below six per cent today and we're not out of the pandemic and if anything has been shown over recent weeks and months, is that the world still is battling away against COVID. We've successfully suppressed the virus here in Australia but there is still a long way to go and we still need to maintain those economic supports into the economy so it's not a time for austerity measures. It’s a time to move to the next phase of our recovery plan which is targeted support, moving off emergency payments into more targeted support. I'll make a speech, John, is my intention before Budget Night this year, which again goes to that fiscal strategy and where we see it in comparison to what I said last year.
QUESTION:
Treasurer, regarding WA particularly, the unemployment rate dropped by 1.3 per cent, it’s now below five per cent. What's your response to the performance of my state in particular?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
In WA?
QUESTION:
In WA.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, obviously it's performed very well in that respect, but as the Prime Minister laid out in his comments yesterday in WA, we have been a strong supporter in Western Australia through the JobKeeper payments, the cashflow boost, underwriting the freight task. He referred to 5,000 extra flights that we helped support. So there's a whole series of measures that we have provided nationally which have also applied in Western Australia. So we have done our part to help the Western Australian economy get to the stronger position it is in today.
QUESTION:
Treasurer, in February last year, the Government received a report from Boston Consulting Group about Australia Post. Now, we heard the day before yesterday from Christine Holgate, in fact, that that report had a plan to privatise the company's parcel delivery services. What's the status of that report? And can you confirm it's gone to Cabinet?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I'll leave those matters to the relevant minister.
QUESTION:
No, I'm asking you as Treasurer, though, what is the status of that report given if you were to privatise the parcel delivery service of the Australia Post, you would be so much better off as a Government, a multibillion-dollar boost to the Budget?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I'm not going to give you a cheap headline here, Andrew. In terms of matters relating to reports and their processes internally being considered, I'll leave that to the relevant minister.
QUESTION:
Are you in favour of privatising Australia Post services?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
It's not about to be privatised.
QUESTION:
Treasurer, earlier you said there hasn't been a massive increase in the number of people going to JobSeeker. So what's your advice on that? What has the increase been there? What impact will it have on the numbers in the next couple of months?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Mark, it's still very early days so I don't want to be definitive on those numbers as yet. As you know, it just finished at the end of March and we're still here in mid-April. So let's wait and see what the ABS numbers for the month of April say and subsequently the month of May. Certainly, there were people who were relying on JobKeeper. There are certainly sectors across the economy, be they tourism, be they international education, be they aviation that continue to do it tough. But my point is a broader point, which is that we held firm when people were calling for us to extend JobKeeper, we held firm because that was the advice from Treasury and we couldn't afford an emergency payment like that going indefinitely. Our political opponents said the sky would fall in at the end of JobKeeper. I'm not seeing the sky falling in just yet.
QUESTION:
How goes the hunt for billions of dollars extra every year for the Aged Care Royal Commission recommendations? And will you rule out redirecting the superannuation increase for that purpose?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Again, I'm not going to get into the rule-in, rule-out game with respect to the Budget and particular measures that may or may not appear in print or on TV or on radio as possible Budget items. That's not the business that I'm in just three weeks out from the Budget. What I can say is the Budget will have significant support for aged care. There's no secret in that. We have a Royal Commission that has pointed out the challenges Australia faces in home care, in residential care. These are issues not just of funding. These are issues that relate to governance. These are issues that relate to the workforce. These are issues that relate to the sustainability of the sector going forward. And we have an ageing population and we want people to age with dignity and with respect, and so it was a very comprehensive report. It was a Royal Commission that was obviously put in place by our Government. The Prime Minister himself is very committed to improvements in this sector and we'll have more to say on Budget Night.
QUESTION:
Both airlines have been out today, making it very clear they're looking for travel certainty, both in terms of domestic and international borders. Can you offer them any certainty at the moment given how slow the vaccine rollout has been going?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well I see that Qantas has actually announced a whole new set of arrangements for the travel bubble with New Zealand and its commitment to more flights and, as you know, we put in place a series of measures to support our aviation sector and, in particular to maintain that capability, not just with respect to domestic services but obviously with respect to the international capability, as well. That was warmly welcomed by Jayne Hrdlicka and by Alan Joyce. So we have shown a deep commitment to ensuring we are keep jobs in the aviation sector. The half-price air fares that we've offered have gone off like hot cakes. More than 300,000 have already been sold and the people are taking up that opportunity, so we continue to stand with the aviation sector, as we have done with other sectors.
QUESTION:
Why do you think women are featuring so strongly in this jobs recovery? 80 per cent of jobs going to women in these figures, a much higher participation rate from women. Do you think that will continue?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well one of the reasons was because women were in those sectors that were hardest hit early on in the pandemic - that was in the hospitality sector, that was in the retail sectors and in those sectors, we have seen a strong comeback in not just these numbers, but in other job numbers. So, going into the month of March, we had seen 450,000 jobs come back for women, whereas 400,000 jobs have come back for men. So, we’ve actually seen more jobs coming back for women and the unemployment rate for women, going into today's numbers, was lower than it was for men. So, women have been deeply affected by this pandemic in terms of the job market, but it's very pleasing to see female participation rate increase, as well as these jobs coming back for women. And that's largely a reflection, Matthew, of the sectors that have been affected and those sectors are now coming back.
QUESTION:
You said that in relation to the superannuation guarantee increase that the economy will be your guiding principle on whether to proceed with those increases in the past. Obviously, we've got 0.5 percentage point increases every year over the next few years. Will it continue to be the case that the state of the economy will be the guiding principle whether those increases will proceed in those future years?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, again, if you're finding another way to get to the same question that was asked over here, I'm not going to go into that speculation, but what I have said in the past is that the RBA, the Grattan Institute and others - independent voices - have spoken about that increase in the superannuation guarantee. We also had a retirement income review which put some very interesting facts on the table about the adequacy of people's retirement, based on the 9.5 per cent and so forth. So, there have been lots of different voices in this debate. I'll let you speculate between now and Budget Night and obviously we'll have more to say then. Thank you.