JOSH FRYDENBERG:
In the last two Budgets, we’ve announced tax relief for more than 10 million Australian families and an expanded and supercharged instant asset write off for more than 99 per cent of Australian businesses. The net result of more than $50 billion of tax relief is that Treasury expect it will create some 120,000 jobs and it will help drive unemployment down by up to a full percentage point. That is good news because it will see unemployment, is the expectation of Treasury, fall below 5 per cent next year. You have to go back to 2006/2008 to see unemployment for a sustained period of time below 5 per cent. Then you have to go all the way back to the 1970s. Our goal is to see more Australians in work, to create more jobs, to support more investment, and then to return more money into Australian families’ pockets with tax relief. That’s been our track record. Those are our policies. And now we are delivering that tax relief to hard-working Australians. These tax policies and the money they are providing to Australian families and businesses, comes on top of the good economic news that we’ve seen in recent weeks, including from Standard & Poor’s that Australia’s credit rating has been upgraded and our AAA credit rating has been reaffirmed. Australia being only one of a small number of countries to have an upgrade over the course of COVID-19. And Australia one of only nine countries to have a AAA credit rating from the three leading rating agencies. We’ve also seen over the last three economic quarters, growth that is the strongest in more than fifty years, and again, we saw in national accounts just recently strong economic growth, beating market expectations. The housing market has been strong. Motor vehicles have been strong. Sales have been strong. Machinery and equipment sales have been strong. Overall, it’s a very positive sign of a strengthening and recovering Australian economy.
QUESTION:
Is there any chance or pathway for the Murugappan family to be permanently settled in Australia?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Minister Alex Hawke will have more to say about that this morning. But I can confirm the reports that the family will be reunited on Australian soil very shortly...
QUESTION:
But that’s the temporary reunion. What about a long-term future? Will they get to stay in Australia for their whole lives?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
The good news is the family will be reunited very shortly on Australian soil. The Minister will make a more detailed statement and you can refer those questions to him then. Overall, our border protection policies have been very effective. As you know, we put them in place during the time of the Howard Government, and again, that worked effectively then. Then they were weakened by our political predecessors. As a result, we saw more than 50,000 unauthorised boat arrivals come to our shores. We saw a cost blowout in the tens of billions of dollars. We saw tens of thousands of people who were put into detention. We saw, tragically, more than 1,200 lives lost at sea. This has been a very difficult policy to implement, but it has been designed to bring some order and integrity to our borders. That has been welcomed by the Australian people. There are some very difficult cases; cases that get protracted through the courts for some time. This is one of those and the Minister will be making an announcement later this morning. But I can confirm the reports that the family will be reunited on Australian soil very shortly.
QUESTION:
Why has it taken so long and a young girl to end up in hospital for the Government to actually intervene and do something about this?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
They were very confronting images and no one wants to see families apart like that. Again, these are very difficult, complex immigration cases; cases that are still rolling through the courts in some events. In this situation, the Minister will be making a statement and you will see from that statement that the family will be coming back to Australia where they can be reunited.
QUESTION:
Calls to bring them home to Biloela have been happening for the last few years since the initial incident at (inaudible). Why did it take it take little Tharnicaa being taken to hospital for things to change?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
As you know, it has been protracted through the courts and the courts have not found that they have refugee status in relation to that particular family. Now, we’ve seen the family separated. The good news is the family will be brought together. But no one is saying these aren’t difficult cases. No one is saying these aren’t heart wrenching cases. No one is saying these cases don’t have significant impacts on families. But the policies that we have put in place have been designed to bring some integrity to our borders after a period where that integrity was lost and the policies were weakened and the result was just devastating. Now, I don’t believe that the decision that the Minister has taken, that will be announced this morning, will undermine the integrity of our border policies. I don’t believe that is the case. I believe that our border policies remain firm and they remain effective.
QUESTION:
On the Four Corners story last night, Chris Bowen claims there were national security implications to the Prime Minister’s links to this particular person. Do you believe there are issues (inaudible) QAnon story?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Chris Bowen, who was my opposite number in the last election, claims a lot of things. I don’t believe many of them to be true. He did claim at the last election that if you didn’t like his policies on tax, then don’t vote for him. Fortunately, on that occasion, the Australian people took him at face value and delivered them the result that they got. I didn’t watch the show, but this notion that the Prime Minister is close to QAnon is absolute rubbish. The PM has put out a statement to that effect. I had better things to do last night.
QUESTION:
Will the tariffs be resolved before the Prime Minister leaves the UK?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I spoke to the Prime Minister last night. He was in a good mood. He has had a very constructive trip. He’s been able to advance the national interests. He sat at the top table. He’s been there with Joe Biden and Boris Johnson and other world leaders, and he’s been talking about the matters that really are important to Australia. That’s critical; that’s critical for Australia to be at the top table as Scott Morrison is. With respect to the FTA with the UK, he was going into those discussions with Boris Johnson at Number 10 Downing Street. I haven’t spoken to him since but he was determined to advance those negotiations and to do a deal, but only a deal that is in Australia’s interests. So, there were still some outstanding issues and whether or not they’ve been fully resolved, I’ll leave that to Dan Tehan who has been doing some excellent work as the Trade Minister on this agreement. But the United Kingdom has been our fifth largest trading partner, and our second largest foreign investor. It’s a relationship based on shared history and shared values. Now with Brexit, it’s really important for both countries to seize this opportunity and to put together a deal; a deal that will be mutually beneficial. When you consider that one in five Australian jobs relate to trade, it’s in Australia's interest to strike these bilateral deals, to strike these multilateral deals, as we’ve done with Japan, as we’ve done with Korea, as we’ve done with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and hopefully, as we’ll do with the United Kingdom. Thank you.