DANICA DE GIORGIO:
Well, joining me now live is the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. Treasurer, good morning, and thank you for joining me. We will get to the Intergenerational Report shortly, but I want to firstly ask you about the lockdowns and strict restrictions that we are seeing across the country. We’re now 18 months into the pandemic. It feels like we haven’t made much progress. Is the message now no longer that we have to learn to live with this virus?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, we’ve made very significant progress as a nation. In fact, I think we’ve been far more successful than nearly any other country on earth in suppressing the virus, and that’s enabled our economic recovery to be very strong and faster than we initially expected. But there are new variants of the virus, in particular, the Delta variant. And even in the United Kingdom they had 18,000 new cases yesterday despite more than 80 per cent of their population having a first dose. So the vaccine is important and we’re rolling it out as quickly as possible, but we are seeing more contagious strains of the virus. That’s creating real challenges, and this is obviously a very critical time with the outbreak in New South Wales, new restrictions in WA and also new cases in the Northern Territory.
DANICA DE GIORGIO:
But are we rolling out the vaccine as quickly as possible? To date we’ve only got about 4 per cent of the entire population fully vaccinated. What part does this slow rollout contribute to these lockdowns?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, firstly more than 7.3 million doses have been delivered and more than 28 per cent of the eligible population has received a first dose. Of the more vulnerable cohorts - the over 50s - more than 50 per cent have received a dose. Of the over 60s, around 60 per cent have received a first dose, and of the over 70s nearly 70 per cent have received a first dose. So we’re ensuring that we’re rolling out the vaccine as fast as possible. As you know, there have been issues with the AstraZeneca vaccine. They’re beyond our control. But we have taken the advice of ATAGI and the health experts and we’ve secured greater access to Pfizer vaccines. So we are rolling out the vaccine as quickly as possible, but we’re not out of this pandemic yet. And, indeed, it’s still got a long way to go, and we’re going to have to learn to live with the virus because, as we’ve seen from the international experience, it still poses a significant threat.
DANICA DE GIORGIO:
Greater Sydney is now in a two-week lockdown. New South Wales has always prided itself on its strategy to remain open, but in this occasion do you think that Gladys Berejiklian got it wrong? Should she have called a lockdown earlier given this was the Delta variant?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Gladys Berejiklian has followed the medical advice and she has performed extremely well through this crisis and, indeed, in facing this latest challenge. I mean, New South Wales has been the gold standard when you look at their performance over the last 15 months. They’ve been able to get on top of outbreaks when they’ve occurred without having to put the whole state into lockdown. So I’m confident that she will continue to take the best possible health advice available to her and take the necessary actions to ensure that her population is kept safe.
DANICA DE GIORGIO:
Let’s move on now to the Intergenerational Report, the fifth has been released. It forecasts deficits for the next 40 years. Are you willing to concede that you will never hand down a budget in the black?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, again, as you know, we’ve faced the biggest economic shock since the Great Depression with a once-in-a-century pandemic. We had balanced the budget for the first time in 11 years going into this crisis. We saw welfare dependency at a 30-year low. We saw growth in government spending contained to a 50-year low. But we then faced this enormous challenge, and we responded as the Australian public would expect us to do - with $291 billion in direct fiscal support. That support has helped keep people in work. That support has helped keep businesses open. That support has seen Australia ahead of any advanced economy in the world, have more people in work today than before the pandemic and to see our economy bigger today than before the pandemic. Unemployment has come down to 5.1 per cent. It continued to fall even after the end of JobKeeper, which our political opponents were calling for it to be continued. So the Australian labour market, the Australian economy, has outperformed even the most optimistic forecasts, and we saw most recently Standard & Poor’s reaffirm Australia’s AAA credit rating. So we’ve done what is necessary, and the best way to repair the budget is to repair the economy, and that is why we’re focused on providing that necessary fiscal support.
DANICA DE GIORGIO:
The burden, though, Treasurer, will be on generations to come. They’re the ones that are going to have to bear the brunt of this. How big of an impact will it have?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
It will have a very significant impact because what the Intergenerational Report says - and I’ve got my copy just here - is that our population will be smaller than initially thought because of what the consequences of the pandemic has led to - namely, the closed borders and the fact that our migration has fallen, our population growth has fallen to its lowest level in a hundred years. We also have an ageing population which is going to put particular pressures on both the expenditure and the revenue side. But when you look at our debt levels, they still remain low by international standards, about half of what it is in the United Kingdom and it United States and less than a third of what it is in Japan. That being said, we continue to extol the importance of being fiscally disciplined. We’ve kept our tax-to-GDP cap in place because you can’t tax your way to prosperity, and what the report does show is that the economy continues to grow despite the challenges we face.
DANICA DE GIORGIO:
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, we have to leave it there. Thank you for joining me.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
My pleasure.