MICHAEL ROWLAND:
Treasurer, good morning.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Nice to be with you, Michael.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
I will get to the jobless figures in a moment, I promise. Firstly, we need to talk about the vaccine rollout which is front and centre for a lot of our viewers this morning.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Sure.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
The Chief Medical Officer, Paul Kelly, has conceded this will be a knock to confidence. Already, we are hearing from GPs getting calls from people in their 50s and 60s cancelling their scheduled second doses of AstraZeneca. How on earth is the Government going to get this vax rollout back on track?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Again, we have taken the medical advice and obviously that has served us very well throughout this pandemic because Australia has been very successful in suppressing the virus. Obviously there have been issues and challenges with the AstraZeneca vaccine. We have taken the advice of ATAGI. It will be available to those aged 60 and over and the medical advice is that the vaccine is still very effective, very appropriate for people of that age cohort, but for those below 60, then the Pfizer vaccine is the one they should be getting.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
You can say that. Paul Kelly can say. I can say. I am more than happy to get my second AstraZeneca dose, but there is clearly a public confidence issue here. We heard from the Health Minister yesterday, there is $41 million allocated for a public health information campaign. What is the Government doing on that front because people need convincing here?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
You are absolutely right, Michael, that there is vaccine hesitancy out there in the community and, again, I can only reiterate the words of the medical experts, people who know much more about this then either you or I, and their advice is that the AstraZeneca vaccine remains safe. Bearing in mind that if you look abroad, for example in the United Kingdom, they are delivering the AstraZeneca vaccine to those aged 40 and over. In South Korea, and those aged 30 and over and those in Germany aged 18 and over, so this is cautious advice and this is the advice the Government is taking.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
Is it too cautious based on the situation in the other countries there you cited?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
It is not for me to say that. This is the advice from ATAGI. It is advice that the Government has taken.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
We do know that fewer than 4 per cent of people have had full vaccination. We speak of course of two doses. The Government is still insisting it is hoping to complete the rollout by 2021, at the end of the year. Surely, that is increasingly a very brave assumption?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
As you know, we are focused on the most vulnerable cohorts initially. So more than 60 per cent of those aged 70 and over have received doses and more than 50 per cent of those aged 60 and over have received doses. So we have been focusing on those more vulnerable cohorts. When it comes to rolling out the vaccine more broadly, as the supply comes on board and, as you know, we are securing more Pfizer vaccine, then the rollout will continue, but we can’t prevent these challenges that have arrived with the AstraZeneca vaccine based on the ATAGI advice. These are challenges faced by all countries that are rolling out this vaccine, but we have taken an approach to get a number of vaccine options and that is what has been provided.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
Okay. I want to talk about jobs and super before you go. Firstly, to jobs. The 5.1 per cent figure, which is great news on any front, but of course minds now turn to, well, if the labour market is tightening so quickly, where are the wage rises for ordinary Australians?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, again, you start to get wage rises when you get competition for labour and what I said in a speech ahead of this year’s Budget was that the unemployment rate really needs to be around 4.5 to 5 per cent before you start to see that upward pressure on wages that we would like to see. But this is a very good sign that the economy is recovering strongly. We know that the unemployment rate has come back to where it was last February before the pandemic. We have seen employment levels above where they were before the pandemic. Australia doing that ahead of any advanced economy. 115,000 jobs in the month of May. 85 per cent of those jobs being full-time jobs. 60 per cent of those jobs going to women. Another really important message here is that even with the end of JobKeeper, Michael, we have seen 84,000 jobs being created since that time. So the sky hasn't fallen in, as our political opponents wanted us to think back then.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
Very, very quickly, we are out of time. The super changes, I guess on any other morning would have been very big news, but there are a lot of other stories going around. What does this mean in your view to the average super holder?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
It means lower fees and better returns from their fund. These are the most significant reforms since compulsory super came in in 1992. We were opposed every step of the way, not just by the funds themselves, but by our political opponents. We got them through with the support of the cross bench. People will now have one fund that will stay with them through the course of their career, so they don't have multiple funds that are unnecessary and that the small balances in those funds get eaten away by the fees. They will be able to compare the performance of their fund online, both in terms of fees and returns. And underperforming funds will be held to account and penalised if they perform below a benchmark. These are very significant reforms, all about lowering fees for Australians with super.
MICHAEL ROWLAND:
Treasurer, thank you.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
My pleasure.