NATALIE BARR:
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg joins me now, morning to you, positive news on those deferrals….
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good morning Nat.
NATALIE BARR:
Still people struggling to pay back their loans, aren’t there? Will you make sure they keep receiving the support they’re needing in a targeted way?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, we’re certainly continuing to roll out Federal Government economic support right across the country. And you saw that in the Budget last year, Nat with the announcement about the tax cuts, which are seeing more than one billion dollars per month go into the pockets of Australian families. We are seeing the business investment incentives which will help spur economic growth and jobs. We’ve got the JobMaker hiring credit to get young people from the jobless queue into a job, as well as bringing forward millions of dollars of infrastructure projects. Now when it comes to those loan payment deferrals, that is good news. What we are seeing in terms of people now starting to repay back those loans. To think that at the height of the crisis $250 billion of loans, both household loans, home loans, as well as small business loans, saw their payments deferred. Now more than 80 per cent of those loans are now seeing their payments restart, and that is good news and it augers well for the economic recovery, which is well underway and we saw that as well with recent job numbers, which showed that 90 per cent of the 1.3 million Australians who lost their jobs are now back at work.
NATALIE BARR:
The NSW Treasurer has taken aim at Queensland Premier, Anastacia Palaszczuk after she asked the Federal Government to extend JobKeeper for the state’s struggling tourism industry, take a listen to this.
[plays excerpt]
Dominic Perrottet: Well its Queensland, you know it’s beautiful one day, subsidised by New South Wales the next, or the Commonwealth, and this is the challenge that we're going to have going forward. The decisions of the day that state governments make have significant economic impacts on their people.
NATALIE BARR:
Is this a fair request, given Anastacia Palaszczuk’s border stance, will the Federal Government consider this?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well the first thing to say, particularly as a Victorian, I'm not going to get in between a state of origin clash there, but what I will say is that, the Morrison Government has delivered unprecedented amounts of economic support to Queenslanders. We have delivered Nat, three times the amount of support to Queenslanders that the Palaszczuk Government has committed to. We have delivered $27.9 billion of support. The Palaszczuk Government has committed $8.8 billion of support. We saw 1.5 million Queenslanders receive the two $750 payments from the Federal Government. We saw 650,000 Queenslanders who were on the JobKeeper payment, we have seen over 100,000 businesses in Queensland receive the cash flow boost, and of course we have seen other significant payments and supports from the Morrison Government go to backing Queenslanders. So we have and will continue to support Queenslanders, but the Federal Government has done the bulk of the heavy lifting.
NATALIE BARR:
Okay. That’s pretty clear. Overnight Germany announced it will only give the AstraZeneca vaccine to under 65s due to insufficient data for older people, do you expect this to impact Australia's vaccine rollout?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well as you know we’ve had the TGA approval for the Pfizer vaccine and we didn’t cut any corners, we didn’t rush that, and that approval came without restrictions around age. We are awaiting the TGA approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and that’s an independent process and we will fully back any recommendations that the TGA make with respect to that vaccine. I note that the German decision has been around, as you say, a lack of information that they have said they’ve got or data around the results. The UK authorities have reached a different conclusion. We will just now wait for the Australian authorities to no doubt take into account all of that data in making their recommendation.
NATALIE BARR:
Okay. Let’s hope it hurries up. Josh Frydenberg, thank you very much for your time this morning, we know you have another interview to go to.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good to be with you Nat.