STEPHANIE ASHER:
I would like to welcome everybody this morning to beautiful Torquay. I’m Stephanie Asher, the Liberal candidate for Corangamite and I’d really like to introduce and welcome our Treasurer Josh Frydenberg this morning and Senator Sarah Henderson and a wonderful local business owner Scott, who I’ll introduce you to further in a moment. Firstly I’d just like to say it’s just fantastic to be here, I’m really excited about delivering for the community. And talking about jobs today, which I’m sure the treasurer will tell you more about in a moment, but just now Scott is somebody that I’ve been speaking to about the success of JobKeeper in his business and some expansion programs that he’s going into, so I’d like to hand over to Scott to say a few words.
SCOTT:
Thanks Steph, it’s great to be here. I’ve had a small business in the Torquay region for 18 years and I’ve always had plenty of work up until lockdown when 80 per cent of our businesses shutdown, and if it wasn’t for the federal Jobkeeper program my business probably would have struggled to continue. Now things have opened up our business is expanding and we are looking at growing. We just started in the Gold Coast in Queensland, and we are looking to expand into other parts of Victoria and Queensland and NSW so business is looking good.
STEPHANIE ASHER:
Yeah, congratulations it’s really exciting well done. I’ll hand over to Josh Frydenberg, welcome Josh.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well thanks very much Steph. It is great to be here in Torquay with the Liberal party’s candidate for Corangamite in Steph Asher. As the mayor of Geelong she has delivered for her local community. She’s a passionate, positive voice, for her local community and she’ll continue to work hard for her local community. It’s also great to be here with Sarah Henderson, our Senator for Victoria and somebody who knows this area very well. Again, another very strong and powerful voice for this local community. And it’s great to meet you Scott and to hear first‑hand how JobKeeper helped save your business and kept people in work. JobKeeper was a remarkable program. It supported and saved more than 700,000 jobs. A million businesses were supported through JobKeeper, and to hear now that you are growing your business, you’ve not just kept your workers on you’re actually looking to expand it, is really a tribute to you, to your staff, but also to the enterprise and the spirit of small business. The Morrison government is backing every day small business with lower tax rates for small business, with cutting red tape for small business, with business investment incentives for small business, and obviously through this pandemic many, many initiatives to support small business like Jobkeeper and the CashFlow boost. Well here in Torquay we’re talking today about jobs. And the latest jobs data is showing that around half a million jobs have been created since September. Australia is experiencing a jobs boom with the unemployment rate falling to around a 13 year low, at 4.6 per cent. Let’s not forget, that when Labor last left office unemployment was at 5.7 per cent and they said in their own words “the key test for the Morrison Government’s management of the pandemic would be what happens to unemployment”. And unemployment has fallen to 4.6 per cent. Even when we brought emergency support like JobKeeper to an end, we’ve seen unemployment fall even lower. And now 180,000 more Australians are in work today than at the start of the pandemic. So while the United States, and the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Germany, have all seen their unemployment rates go up since the start of the pandemic, Australia has seen its unemployment rate come down. Now what we’ve done so far through this pandemic here in Australia is avoid a repeat of the experience of the recessions that we had in the 1980’s and the 1990’s where unemployment stayed elevated for a long time. In fact it took between eight to ten years for the unemployment rate to come back down to where it was going into that recession. This time around, we’ve done it in a little over a year, and that’s a tribute to 26 million Australians and their hard work. But we know that we’re not out of the pandemic just yet, and the Omicron variant is a reminder of the challenges we face. But some of the medical data coming in is actually encouraging, that Omicron could be this bridge from the pandemic to the endemic. And what we mean by that is that it’s 75% less severe than Delta. And we need to no longer focus on the number of cases, we need to focus on what’s happening in our hospital system, and right now there is 51 people who are on ventilators and around 150 people who are in ICU. That’s out of a population of 26 million Australians, and we know that the majority of people who are in hospital are actually there because they have been unvaccinated. So it’s a really important reminder to go out and get vaccinated, and if you’re eligible to go out and get your booster shot. And a large number of those people who are in hospital have also been getting the Delta variant and now the Omicron variant looks to be overtaking the Delta variant, so some of that medical data that’s coming through is encouraging.
So we’re not out of this pandemic, there is no room for complacency and we need to lock in this economic recovery. But there is a great risk to this economic recovery and the strength of this recovery continuing, and that’s the Labor Party and their hard‑left leader Anthony Albanese. Just look at the history of Anthony Albanese. He’s always stood for higher taxes. At the last election he supported the retirees tax, the housing tax, the superannuation tax, the higher tax on income earners and the tax on family small businesses. He was asked in the lead‑up to the last election about the Governments’ plan for tax cuts and he said they were for the top end of town. More politics of envy, more class war rhetoric, that’s the real Anthony Albanese. So don’t be fooled by this small target strategy that Labor is adopting. We need to know the real instincts of Anthony Albanese and we’ve started to get a glimpse. We saw it in a $6 billion cash splash to promise tax payers money to people for getting the jab, even though they’ve already had the jab. And we’ve seen it in the scare mongering when we brought to an end JobKeeper where he said the economic roof would come crashing down. Well it didn’t and in fact the unemployment rate is lower today, with more jobs being created on the horizon. So Australians can be confident and optimistic and hopeful in this year 2022. We know we’ve got some challenges ahead, we know that we will bind together as Australians but we can also be very proud of what we’re seeing with our economic recovery, and particularly this latest news with up to half a million new jobs being created since the start of September. I’ll now hand over to Senator Sarah Henderson.
SARAH HENDERSON:
Well good morning and I would also like to acknowledge our wonderful Liberal candidate for Corangamite, Stephanie Asher. Stephanie is an absolute go‑getter who has a very strong, trusted and proven track record of delivering as the mayor of Greater Geelong and I’m so proud to be working with Stephanie, championing her work in our local community and of course as we continue to drive our health and economic recovery. To the Treasurer, wonderful news today with the jobs recovery, the surging of employment in our region, we’re seeing it on the ground here in Corangamite, and Scott of course is a great example of a small business which is thriving in difficult circumstances and it’s wonderful to see that Aussie BBQ cleaning has recently sold a franchise to the Gold Coast. Scott is looking to sell his franchises all around the nation. A great small business which is doing fantastic work here on the surf coast and right the way down to Lorne, and of course there are plenty of other opportunities, so please have a look at his business, it really is a fabulous example of a small business which is prospering, of course with the support of JobKeeper.
I just want to say as a member of the Morrison Government, I’m so proud of the work that we are doing here locally in Corangamite. Driving investment in jobs, in our economic recovery, in our health recovery, of course, as we work hard to recover from the pandemic, in mental health and, of course, in community facilities like what we’ve seen in Torquay. Our investment, our $20 million investment in a new aquatic centre, our investment in a basketball stadium, in major roads, in the duplication of the rail between South Geelong and Warne Ponds. Stephanie has a huge focus on investing in better roads and rails and, of course, we’ve got our wonderful Avalon airport also supported by the Morrison Government which helped Avalon go international. I do want to comment that I am concerned that two of the biggest projects in our region, the *inaudible* Defence Project and also fast rail for Geelong are under threat from an Albanese Government, if ever Anthony Albanese was to be elected. Unfortunately, we’ve seen Anthony Albanese announce fast rail between Melbourne and Brisbane and quite shockingly Geelong has been excluded under his plan. That’s an absolute disgrace and it’s a reflection on the lack of commitment that Libby Coker and Richard Marles, the two local Labor members, have to our region. Of course, we know that Labor turned its back on the *inaudible* Project, it cancelled the contact back in 2012 and we’ve also seen no commitment to that $1 billion defence project which is an absolute game changer for our region. So I want to congratulate Stephanie, a great champion for Corangamite and I would ask everyone to get behind her at the next federal election. Over to you Josh.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Are there any questions?
JOURNALIST:
Sarah, coming back to the fast rail thing, I got your email at 8 past midnight last night, I think you used a phrase “utter contempt” twice in the first two paragraphs. Why is it utterly contemptable for Labor to be committing to Melbourne and Brisbane? Geelong’s not between Melbourne and Brisbane.
SARAH HENDERSON:
And that’s the whole point James.
JOURNALIST:
Yeah but surely they can do two things at once?
SARAH HENDERSON:
Well regrettably when we announced the $2 billion dollar commitment to fast rail, you might recall, before the last election, the Treasurer was with me and with the Prime Minister, that was a commitment never matched by Labor. Labor never committed to Geelong fast rail. And now we see Anthony Albanese announce this plan and exclude Geelong. It’s an absolute disgrace and it is a huge reflection on Richard Marles and Libby Coker’s failure to fight for our region. They could not fight their way out a brown paper bag. There was no reason why Labor could not have included Geelong in their plan. I mean the plan in pathetic, $500 million is all that’s been committed, that’s half of what’s been committed to the Warrnambool to Melbourne upgrade. So it is a shocking reflection on Labor’s commitment to our region, and as we know it’s a very, very big project which will help drive our economic recovery and is vital infrastructure for our region and under the Morrison Government, a re‑elected Morrison Government of course, that project will be going ahead in leaps and bounds.
JOURNALIST:
Josh, you would have probably seen the story on the ABC, I think it was this morning, about how working holiday makers, the absence of working holiday makers, left a $3.2 billion hole in the Australian economy in 2020. How are we going to get those people back, which is really important for places like the surf coast?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well obviously opening up our borders in a COVID‑safe way is a priority for us. We’ve already made an announcement in terms of skilled workers, in terms of international students, and that is going to be welcome, that’s going to help strengthen our economy. We did have a two week pause for Omicron until we got some more information and then we lifted that pause and again that was based on the medical advice. So what we are starting to see is the opening of international borders, what we’ve seen here locally is the easing of restrictions, Victoria coming out of lockdown, NSW coming out of lockdown and state borders opening. So that would be a natural progression from where we are as, of course, we learn to live with the virus
JOURNALIST:
Treasurer, Australians are telling us that they’re scrambling to find rapid tests, you know, there are also calls for small business from the social sector, for the Government to make these tests free. Why isn’t that the Governments plan?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well firstly we have invested substantially in providing support for more testing. In fact, we have supported at the Commonwealth level around 55 million PCR tests and that has been at a cost of $2.5 billion. As you know we fully funded the tests under Medicare and went 50/50 with the states for the test through their system. Now, the rapid antigen test is going to become the test of default, as opposed to the PCR test, and that is welcome. Now we have ordered some more tests at a Commonwealth level and we are providing it through to the aged care system, obviously to vulnerable people, and we’re going to be working with the states and it’s on the agenda for National Cabinet next Wednesday, which the Prime Minister has called, for concessional support for those people who need those rapid antigen tests. But the states also have ordered more than 80 million new tests, tests that are on their way here to Australia. So more tests will be available, we can’t make every product free of charge but what we do do is provide that extra support where it’s needed as we’ve done in the past.
JOURNALIST:
And just on the price of some of those tests where people are buying them at the chemist, you know, we’ve been told about price gouging, people sometimes paying up to $25 for a single test. What is the Government going to do to stop that kind of behaviour with marked‑up prices?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well I’ve actually spoken to the head of the ACCC, Rod Simms, directly about this very issue and he’s also conscious of it. So the ACCC will be monitoring the pricing of those rapid antigen tests to ensure that there is not price gouging across the community.
JOURNALIST:
Just in regards to what the ACCC can actually do on that though, is there a law against this kind of marked‑up pricing, is there anything they can actually do to stop this from happening?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well they take action against those businesses that engage in breaking the competition law, and price gauging is not on and the ACCC have been charged to look at that issue and Rod Simms is very conscious of that and no one should underestimate his determination.
JOURNALIST:
Just finally, Anthony Albanese has responded to your criticism of him in your op-ed today. He says there is no criticism of his ministerial record. What’s your response?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well I tell you what his ministerial record has been, is a failure, because what we saw under Labor when they were last in office was that we lost one in eight jobs in manufacturing. We actually have now seen a million jobs in manufacturing, we’ve now seen trade apprentices come in record levels, the highest number since records began back in 1963, 217,000 trade apprentices. He was a minister in a Government that saw an unemployment rate at 5.7 per cent. Today its 4.6 per cent. So we do know that there have been many failures in the Governments in which he has served as a minister. I also note that as a minister, I mentioned this in the piece today, he raised the prospect of a congestion tax. Now a congestion tax is on top of his other ideas for taxes like a retirees tax, and a superannuation tax, and higher income taxes, and a tax on family and small businesses and, of course, a housing tax. These are taxes, higher taxes, which he’s said Labor had a strong mandate for. And let’s not also forget that he has been a strong advocate for an inheritance tax, is that his view today? Well he’s been a strong advocate, even when he came into Parliament for an inheritance tax. And we also know that he’s argued against economic reforms like deregulation of financial markets, like privatisation, like tariff cuts, which were endorsed and supported by the Hawke and Keating Governments. In fact they boosted the competitiveness of the Australian economy and he was against them. So his instincts are actually for bigger Government and higher taxes and now he wants to sneak into Government by being a small target. Well Australians need to know about the true economic instincts of Labor’s Anthony Albanese, somebody who’s never held a treasury portfolio. And that’s really important. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, was the Treasurer, he’s overseen tax cuts, more money into people’s pockets, he believes in supporting aspirational Australians. Whereas Anthony Albanese has always believed in attacking aspirational Australians. This leopard doesn't change its spots. And Australians in the lead‑up to the next election will know a lot more about the true Anthony Albanese. And even more recently Anthony Albanese has promised a $6 billion cash splash to pay people to get the jab even though they’ve already had the jab. A policy which his shadow finance minister had to walk away from on Insiders, and then his shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, also had to walk away from and now embarrassingly Labor are seeking to hide that policy. And we also know that Anthony Albanese in his own words, when JobKeeper was brought to an end, said that at more than $2 billion a month it should be kept going indefinitely, even though since that time more people have gone into work and the unemployment rate has come down. So Anthony Albanese is damned by his own words. And I say to Anthony Albanese, let’s have the next election about economic management, about commitment to lower taxes, because your own shadow treasurer has said the key test of the Governments management of the pandemic will be what happens to unemployment and jobs. And today we’ve seen nearly half a million new jobs being created since the start of September and the unemployment rate come down to 4.6 per cent and a 13 year low. And we’re standing with a small business person who only wants to get ahead and who’s now looking to expand his business having benefitted from JobKeeper. And that’s what Stephanie Asher as our liberal candidate here in Corangamite, and that’s what Sarah Henderson as a proud senator for Victoria, are doing every other day, advocating for policies that create more jobs across our communities.
SARAH HENDERSON:
Josh I just also want to add that Anthony Albanese has a very poor track record as the former Infrastructure minister in this region. When the Great Ocean Road was in dire need of funding, Anthony Albanese turned his back on one of Australia’s most iconic roads in our region and said that this was a matter for the state government. Anthony Albanese and Labor refused to fund the upgrade of the Great Ocean Road. And very proudly the Coalition Government has driven some $50 million and more money from the state government to upgrade one of Australia’s most iconic tourist roads, which is now helping to drive our local economic recovery. So even locally, whether its rail upgrades, the duplication of the rail which Anthony Albanese showed no interest in between South Geelong and Warne Ponds, or the Great Ocean Road, Anthony Albanese and Labor locally have a very very poor track record.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
We could keep adding to that list.
SARAH HENDERSON:
It’s a long list.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Because as Sarah was talking, I was reminded of the fact that Anthony Albanese never saw the construction of the Western Sydney, second airport and that is something that a Coalition Government is now delivering. A second airport for Sydney. A major project that is creating tens of thousands of jobs. But as Infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese never had the courage to take that step, which was opposed by some at the time no doubt, but to take that step to see the construction of a second airport in Sydney and the Western Sydney airport, now that the sod has been turned, is going to be a really important infrastructure project that will help drive the economic growth and productivity of our nation.