LAURA JAYES:
Treasurer, thank you for your time.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
My pleasure.
LAURA JAYES:
Daniel Andrews has delayed opening business in Victoria. Is this justified?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
No. The Victorian Government has shown a callous indifference to the loss of jobs in Victoria and to the plight of small business. Look at the statements yesterday Laura, from the Council of Small Business, the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Hotels Association. They said that yesterday's announcement was inexplicable and unacceptable, that businesses are losing hope, that there was a lack of consultation. You see in New South Wales they had more cases than we have in Victoria today, yet they were able to open the cafés, the pubs, the clubs and the restaurants and to get people back to work. More than 1,000 people in Victoria are losing their job every day of this lockdown on average. Now Victoria with 26 per cent of Australia's population makes up 40 per cent of those effectively unemployed across the country. More than 500,000 Victorians are effectively unemployed. So Daniel Andrews should have allowed small businesses to open in a COVIDSafe way from today.
LAURA JAYES:
Well, Daniel Andrews was grilled about this over the weekend and he essentially accused some Federal politicians of playing politics. He said, "some are from Victoria but not for Victoria". Was he referring to you?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well Daniel Andrews doesn't get to decide who's for Victoria. That sounds like a desperate distraction from a Premier under real pressure. The reality is there has been a lot of legitimate criticism made of Victoria's handling of this crisis. For example, the Victorian President of the AMA has said the handling of the crisis in Victoria has been like watching a slow-motion car crash. Is he not for Victoria? When you've had the former Chief Commissioner of Police in Victoria talk about an unwarranted grab for power. Is he not for Victoria? When you hear one of Australia's most successful business leaders and the Chairman of CSL, a medical doctor himself, talk about Daniel Andrews' road map as being a road map to misery, is he not for Victoria? You see there's been consistent, sustained criticism and for good reason, not just of the failures in hotel quarantine which led to this costly, costly, costly damaging second outbreak, but because of the lack of effective contact testing and tracing and other measures that the Victorian Government has failed to implement.
LAURA JAYES:
Do you have an open line to Daniel Andrews at the moment? Are you able to consult with him privately? Have you been able to make these pleas privately or is your relationship as such where it just becomes these public criticisms?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, the Prime Minister talks to Daniel Andrews, I work with my counterpart in Victoria. But when I'm speaking, I'm speaking on behalf of…
LAURA JAYES:
Are they sympathetic to your arguments though, Josh Frydenberg, behind the scenes?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well again, I'm not going to go into private conversations but what I will say is that it's very clear that the small business groups representing millions of Victorians are very sympathetic to our calls for them to be allowed to get back to work. Quite clearly it's having a huge cost on the Victorian and indeed the national economy. Laura, I see the numbers…
LAURA JAYES:
Can you quantify that cost this morning? What are the numbers telling you?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
So we know that in the September quarter the impact is, it's been estimated somewhere between $12 to $14 billion but that doesn't take into account the additional fiscal support that is being provided by the Morrison Government as a result of this second wave in Victoria. We've already provided $31 billion of support to Victorian families and businesses. The expectation is that around 60 per cent of those Australians who are on JobKeeper in the December and the March quarters will be from Victoria. So that's billions and billions of dollars going from the Federal coffers into Victoria to support, as we should and we will, Victorians through this crisis which started with those failures at hotel quarantine, for which no one has taken personal responsibility in Victoria.
LAURA JAYES:
Well, we're looking at lost economic activity every day, no doubt that's costing billions of dollars as well. Doesn't this mean that the numbers in your Budget that were predicated on there not being an extension of lockdown are now wildly out of date?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well we'll update our Budget numbers at the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which is due before Christmas, and then again we'll update the numbers in next year's Budget in May. We'll continue to update those forecasts. But we did see the unemployment tick up to 6.9 per cent. What we have seen is Victoria really, Laura, being an outlier when it comes to jobs being lost. We've seen jobs being created across the rest of the country and jobs being lost in Victoria. This is why the Premier really needs to heed the call from the small business groups and from Victorians right across the community who understand the impact that's being lost. You see, the Victorian Government's making it up as they go. I mean there's no logic to some of these announcements they've been making. There's no logic to the fact that Years 8, 9 and 10 are not at school right now. I mean Victorian school kids have lost the better part of six months, whereas they'd only lost a couple of weeks in South Australia. I mean you've got the mental health statistics damning of what's happened in Victoria; 77 per cent higher uptake of services for Beyond Blue in Victoria compared to the other States. It's a mental health and economic nightmare that's been caused by that second wave in Victoria.
LAURA JAYES:
JobMaker will be debated in Parliament today. Labor says it has legitimate concerns that this program could be rorted, it could also be to the detriment of older Australians. Are you taking that on board? Have you got safeguards in place to make sure that does not happen?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well again, we worked with Treasury on the design of this program and they have estimated we'll support some 450,000 jobs. It's a vitally important program as part of our economic recovery. The reason why we are focusing in this case on people under the age of 35 is because they've been hardest hit. The employment levels and the jobs lost for those who are in that cohort has been four times for those over the age of 35. We know from Australia's experience with previous recessions, Laura, particularly in the 1980s and 90s, that it took a long time to get people from unemployment into work and an even longer period of time to get younger people ‑ in the 1990s it took a full decade to get the unemployment rate back below 6 per cent from where it started. But for younger people it took a full 15 years to get their employment levels back from where it started so that's why we're focusing on young people. We also have other programs, like the Restart program, which is for those who are aged 50 plus who have been on the unemployment queue who a business takes on. We provide up to $10,000 in support to that business who takes them on. So we have a range of programs, but given the impact on young people from the COVID‑19 recession it's vitally important that we pass this. When you look at the 45 electorates with an average age of 35 and below, only 10 of them are in Coalition seats. So the vast majority are actually in Labor seats, you know, driving home to them the importance of this program.
LAURA JAYES:
Okay, Treasurer, thanks so much for your time. We'll speak soon.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Always good to be with you.