DAVID KOCH:
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg joins me now from Melbourne. Treasurer, good morning to you.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good morning Kochie.
DAVID KOCH:
I was quite surprised Barnaby Joyce hadn’t talked to anyone in the Government about his concerns and get the facts. What are the facts? How secure is this app and can the Chinese hack into it like Barnaby is concerned about?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well of course we have looked very closely at the privacy issues, the security aspects of it, and what we’re doing is putting in place the latest digital technology that’s been working in a country like Singapore to ensure that we protect lives and livelihoods as you would expect us to do. And by being able to trace the so-called digital handshake and to know when you’ve been in contact with someone with the coronavirus, could be very important to saving your lives as well as the lives of others.
DAVID KOCH:
So it’s going to use Bluetooth, it’s not wireless, so it’s just phone to phone. Can you guarantee us that no other Government Department will have access to it, and that when a vaccine comes along, all the data will be wiped?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well again, I’ll leave that to the relevant Minister to go into further detail, but I did see him on your program just a few days ago extolling the virtues of this particular technology and what we want to do is to put the interests and the health of Australians first and we’ve had quite a great deal of success so far in flattening that curve. We saw the number of cases increasing daily by more than 20 per cent at one point. Now we’re down to less than two per cent, and I think this reflects the fact that people are following the social distancing and the isolation and quarantine measures, and this new app I think is the next step in the strategy.
DAVID KOCH:
Okay, while we’ve got you here, the New South Wales Government is in talks to bail out Virgin Australia if it moves it’s headquarters to the new Western Sydney Airport. This follows Queensland saying we’ll give you $200 million if you keep your headquarters in Brisbane, so it’s becoming a bit of a competition between states. Would you consider a joint package with New South Wales to save the airline? Or even think about what the American Government did during the GFC, loan this company money and take shares in it?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well Kochie we’ve been pretty consistent with our position to date, which is that we want to see two major airlines operate in the Australian domestic routes. We want to see Virgin survive but we don’t want to be owning an airline. As you remember, Paul Keating sold off Qantas back in 1993. We believe that Virgin is a good company. We believe that it’s been hit, like many other businesses, by the global pandemic, but it also has some shareholders with very deep pockets. As you know Etihad, Singapore Airlines, Chinese-related companies, and of course Virgin International. Let’s see what those major shareholders do, but we do want to see Virgin continue to operate.
DAVID KOCH:
So you will wait and see what those shareholders do before you come into a final decision on it?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well there are commercial processes that a company like Virgin will go through and they’re decisions for its board and for its management.
DAVID KOCH:
Now the Government has directed the ACCC to develop a mandatory code of conduct to address bargaining power imbalances between the likes of Google and Facebook and traditional media companies, part of a plan to modernise media law. Why is this so important and what will this in effect do?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well no one knows this better than you and your station, Kochie, or the other many hardworking journalists across the country. They are generating content all the time, but the social media giants are using that content to get traffic through their websites but not paying for it. What we want to see is a level playing field. What we want to see here is a fair go for the companies and for the journalistic content that is prepared. Australia has seen, just like the rest of the world, the rise of these social media giants, and that has brought into question the adequacy of our regulatory framework and the viability of traditional media outlets. We asked the ACCC to engage in discussions with the stakeholders to reach a voluntary code of conduct. That hasn’t made meaningful progress so now we’re taking the decisive decision to create a mandatory code, seeking to be the first country in the world to ensure that these social media giants pay for content.
DAVID KOCH:
Yep, good on you. And just finally while we’ve got you, Malcolm Turnbull’s memoirs have been released in the midst of this crisis, a bit of revenge here on his part. Some calls from within your Party to actually expel him, give him a lifetime ban, do you want to see him kicked out?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I think that’s a distraction to be honest. I think we need to respect the Office of Prime Minister and those who have held that Office regardless of their political persuasion. Of course I’ll disagree with some of the free character assessments that Malcolm has given in his book, but at the end of the day, it was an Office that he held, he was the Coalition’s Prime Minister, the nation’s Prime Minister and I think those issues in relation to expelling and the like, I think that’s a distraction from what is the real game, which is the Government’s absolute focus on saving lives and livelihoods.
DAVID KOCH:
Okay. Josh Frydenberg, thanks for joining us.