JASE:
G’day, Josh. How are you, mate?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good morning, guys. Nice to be with you.
JASE:
Just quickly before we get into, Josh. We were just having the debate before the song…
PJ:
Five star, I reckon.
JASE:
Five star or caravan park; where would we see you?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Ha. How about a tent, how is that?
PJ:
Don’t believe it for a second.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
No, no. Having just been up in Cairns, I was there at a nice motel up there. Then also was in Townsville and in Brisbane. You know, those areas have been hit hard by the closed international borders, but also the closed domestic borders. As you know, tourism is more than just the airlines. It’s the tourism operators, it’s the café owners, it’s the retail shop, and it’s the hotel. They all need support.
JASE:
PJ brought up a good point actually…
PJ:
I was just going to say I think this is a great idea to get tourism booming again and to get people on flights, but the thing is with job certainty up in the air for a lot of people right now, they don’t know the future of their jobs for quite a lot of people. Do you think that people will open their wallets to go and spend extra money on accommodation and all the costs that come with holidays right now?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I think they will because we’re talking about half-price fares and 800,000 of them and more planes in the air means more jobs on the ground. We’ve already seen the economy pick up very substantially across the country as the health restrictions have eased and people have got their confidence back. So, it might surprise your listeners to know that 94 per cent of the 1.3 million Australians who either lost their jobs early on in the crisis or saw their working hours reduced to zero, are now back at work. But there are some sectors and there are some regions across the country that are continuing to do it tough.
JASE:
When you say 800,000 half-price flights, is this going to be one of those things…you hear flight specials sometimes and then you go to book them and you’ve got to fly out at 1 am and only into Broome. Are we talking, you know…
PJ:
Pretty mainstream times?
JASE:
You know what I mean? Sometimes you see a flight special and I can’t get that flight
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
We’ve put thirteen key destinations to start with, including Gold Coast and Cairns up north and Avalon and Launceston in the south. You heard today from the Mayor of Kangaroo Island saying how wonderful this will be for his particular area. So, there will be more flights, they will be cheaper and it’s based on the average price back in February. So, it’s not like the airlines can go and discount them today or hike them up today and then it’s not really helping people. So we’ve based it on the average across the month of February.
JASE:
Right. Hey, just before we let you go, we saw ScoMo get it on TV, have you had the vaccine jab yet?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
No, I’m not one of the 100,000 Aussies who have had the vaccine as yet, but I do look forward to getting it.
JASE:
Josh, Josh, Josh. Just be careful. PJ thinks ScoMo is going to sneak in a microphone in the needle or something.
PJ:
Oh shut up, I do not, Jason.
JASE:
Just be careful. She thinks there might be a little GPS tracker ScoMo puts in the syringe.
PJ:
I do not.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Come on, come on. Don’t worry about that PJ, it’s all above board. As you know, around the world they’ve had heaps of these jabs and the good news is that it’s reduced the amount of hospitalisations and it’s reduced the transmission of the virus so it’s certainly working and we look forward to it rolling out here, with now more than 100,000 Aussies having received the jab.
JASE:
Do you think ScoMo is walking around with a tracker like Pokemon Go?
PJ:
I never said that.
JASE:
We’ll let you go, Josh. We know you have a busy morning. Always fun to chat. Take it easy.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Great to be with you guys and all the best to your listeners.