GARETH PARKER:
The Federal Treasurer is Josh Frydenberg, he joins me on the line. Treasurer, good morning.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Nice to be with you, Gareth.
GARETH PARKER:
Josh, you reckon that women are getting bigger tax cuts than just about anyone in this economy at the moment. How does that work? I didn’t realise that the tax code discriminated between men and women?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
It doesn’t, but what we have delivered, as you know, is very significant tax reform and that’s seen more than 11 million Australians get more than $30 billion worth of tax relief, but particularly young women have been the beneficiaries. So in terms of the proportion of their tax being reduced by these tax cuts it’s been greatest for women aged 24 and below where they’ve seen their average tax paid fall by 20 per cent compared to what it would have been under the Labor Party when Labor was last in government. So it’s a very significant benefit and it’s a result of our lower taxes that we’ve legislated through the parliament and continue to roll out.
GARETH PARKER:
You’re very keen as a government to put the argument on the economy and on tax, but the polls are showing that, well, it’s not working at the moment, that Labor is still well ahead.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, I know the experience in Western Australia with COVID has been quite different to the rest of the country. But, you know, for many of those on the east coast we’ve seen a pretty frustrating summer. We’ve seen the spread of Omicron. We’ve seen holidays disrupted and obviously high level of absenteeism in the various workplaces. That obviously is playing out, I think, in the polls. But we’re focusing on getting the big things right. That involves keeping unemployment low, and it’s at 4.2 per cent, so that’s a 13‑year low. It also involves keeping people safe, and so 10 million boosters have rolled out. We have a double‑dose vaccination rate of 94 per cent across the country, one of the highest in the world, one of the lowest fatality rates anywhere in the world from COVID. And then, of course, our overall economic recovery is strong. And our national security focus is strong. So that’s what we are looking to as the priorities, and there’s a long way to go, as you know, Gareth, between now and election day. And in 2019 there were many political pundits, many in the media, who drew a different conclusion as to what the election result would be. And obviously they turned out to be wrong.
GARETH PARKER:
Do you think that the last week helped, though, and the chaos in parliament? Obviously a very bad situation with the religious discrimination bill for the Prime Minister.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
It was a difficult decision or difficult week. And, you know, this week the Senate’s not sitting, there’s Senate estimates. But in the house we’ve got important legislation, including in my portfolio of Treasury we are looking to give the AAT more power to pause the ATO following up tax debts in order to allow some of those disputes to be resolved. We’ve also got important legislation to protect critical infrastructure. It’s a national security focus as well. So there’s some important legislation that’s before the house this week. And, again, that’s ordinary course of business. That’s, for us, important to the economy continuing to work and Australia’s national security continuing to be protected.
GARETH PARKER:
Well, it’s probably just as well the Senate’s not sitting because you got rolled by the Senate last week with your regulations on proxy advisers. What’s all that about?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, again, it’s not probably an area of law that too many of your listeners are au fait with, but it was about putting in place what we considered to be sensible measured reforms to require proxy advisers to have a financial services licence, which will require them to operate efficiently and fairly. And also to ensure that companies that proxy advisers advise their institutional shareholders on have an opportunity to respond to recommendations that proxy advisers may make about how to vote on particular resolutions. It was about superannuation members – and there’ll be many of those listening to your program today – to know actually what their super fund votes on and how they vote. And so that’s a transparency and accountability requirement. And we also wanted to see a degree of independence between the proxy advisers and the funds that they were advising. So these were sensible reforms. Obviously there was a different view from the crossbench and, of course, the Labor Party and the Greens opposed us. But there’s been a lot of other reforms, Gareth, very important ones, where we have been opposed by Labor, the Greens and members of the crossbench, like on superannuation, which are going to deliver more than $17 billion of savings to consumers which we did pass through the parliament. Like on continuous disclosure regulations, like on litigation funders requiring an Australian financial services licence. We were opposed by the Labor Party and the Greens on important pieces of legislation, yet we got it through the Senate. So I recognise you can’t win every battle, but certainly we do think that they were measured and sensible reforms and my Coalition colleagues backed them in. But unfortunately we didn’t get the numbers in the crossbench.
GARETH PARKER:
If you continue to suffer defeats like this in the parliament and there’s obviously government MPs who crossed the floor on the question of the religious discrimination bills, the thing that John Howard used to say was that if you can’t govern yourselves, you can’t govern the country. Is there a sense, do you think, from voters around your government at the moment that it all just feels a bit chaotic and maybe you’ve run your course?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, I certainly strongly disagree with that. And if you look at the key achievements of this government and, indeed, the Australian people through this pandemic it has been to one of the highest vaccination rates anywhere in the world, one of the lowest mortality rates anywhere in the world, a stronger recovery than any advanced economy. I mean, don’t forget Jim Chalmers, the shadow treasurer, said the single biggest test of the Coalition’s management of the pandemic will be what happens to unemployment and jobs. Labor when they were in office, unemployment was at 5.7 per cent. Today it’s 4.2 per cent. There are one million more women in work today than under the Labor Party. Youth unemployment is at a 10‑year low. So whether it’s our skills program, our infrastructure program, the lower taxes that we’re rolling out, they’re all helping to deliver a stronger economy. And one of the key battle lines at the next election, Gareth, will be around tax. And we know that the Labor Party and the Greens have been in coalition before, and if there was a hung parliament they’d be in coalition again. And they took to the last election – Anthony Albanese signed up to a retirees tax, a housing tax, higher taxes on super, higher taxes on income earners and higher taxes on family businesses. And he pretends he’s just walking away from it now and he didn’t believe in it two years ago or three years ago. Well, I don’t think that will wash with the Australian public.
GARETH PARKER:
Treasurer, thanks for your time. By the way, did you know that the Prime Minister played the ukulele?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I didn’t. And I certainly wouldn’t want to match him for that. But, you know –
GARETH PARKER:
You don’t play an instrument, do you, Treasurer?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, I go as far as chopsticks on the piano and that’s about it.
GARETH PARKER:
Righto, okay. All right, we’ll look forward to your rendition in a future interview. Thank you very much for your time this morning.