NATALIE BARR:
Good morning, Treasurer.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good morning.
NATALIE BARR:
A Chinese spy ship doing bog laps of our coast, no military exercises at the time. What was it doing here?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, look, those are matters for our defence and our intelligence services. The reality is we do exercises with other countries on a regular basis and we do so to ensure that our military is best equipped and most ready for any challenges that it faces. And today with the announcement that we’re now sending our ADF and Federal Police off to the Solomon Islands it just shows you again how important our front line Defence Force personnel are.
NATALIE BARR:
It came as far south as Sydney, though. I’m sure you were in some high‑level meetings. Were people concerned?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, again, these are matters that defence and intelligence services always monitor and, you know, we have a national security meeting quite regularly. Indeed, we had one yesterday to agree to this deployment to the Solomon Islands. And we take all the necessary precautions to ensure that whatever business we conduct in those meetings is kept appropriately secret.
NATALIE BARR:
Okay. Let’s talk about the Solomons. The Prime Minister at pains yesterday to say we are not entering into anything that government is doing. How do you skirt that line?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, Nat, the first thing to say is this is a response to a request from the Solomon Islands’ government. That is really important. We’re partners in the region, they’re part of the Pacific family, and Australia has extensive responsibilities to our neighbours in the region. And those images of the civil unrest, the domestic unrest, was very serious. Looting, rioting, the burning of buildings. And Australia has the capacity, whether it’s our federal police, whether it’s our Defence Force personnel, whether it’s our foreign affairs diplomats, to support those domestic law enforcement services in those countries. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re responding positively to a request from the Solomon Islands. We’re going to have more than 70 personnel over there and including, obviously, the ADF as well. The intention is for it to be a short deployment to help obviously see a restoration of calm and law and order.
NATALIE BARR:
Let’s talk about this proposed federal integrity commission. The debate now being put off until next year. Wasn’t this a promise before the last election, and haven’t we had a draft of this for 12 months? So why is it being put off?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, a couple of key points here. We allocated $150 million to establish this integrity commission. We’ve released extensive exposure drafts. We’ve consulted widely with stakeholders. The integrity commission model that we’re proposing has two divisions. It has a law enforcement division and a public enforcement division. It’s also got independent oversight and it also has the powers of a royal commission. Now, if the Labor Party said, “Yes, we’ll tick off on your model,” then it would become a reality. But the Labor Party have not sought to do that. They’ve sought to make politics out of a very sensitive issue. We want to ensure that we have the appropriate procedural safeguards on the one hand and on the other, we’re tackling corruption at all levels. That’s what our integrity commission is designed to do. We’ve allocated the money, it’s got sufficient powers and the legislation has been released for consultation and we’ve taken that consultation into account.
NATALIE BARR:
Okay. Let’s talk about new data out this morning showing the jobs market roaring back to life. Whenever we talk to the unions they say a lot of these jobs are only part‑time, they’re not even part‑time, they’re only a few hours a week. What do you say to that?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
We’ve actually seen full‑time jobs come back in huge numbers and the data today shows that 350,000 new jobs have been created since the start of September. That’s more than 5,000 jobs a day, Nat. And on top of that, we’ve seen 1.2 million people come off those COVID disaster payments that were in place in the locked down states of New South Wales and Victoria as well as the ACT. Now those people have gone back into work. How do we know? Because actually the number of people in that time on income support has gone down. This is another proof point that the economic plan is working, that the Australian economy is recovering. We saw this week consumer confidence was up again, job ads are more than 30 per cent higher than they were going into the pandemic, and Australia is one of only nine countries in the world to have retained its AAA credit rating from the three leading credit rating agencies. So, yes there was a massive economic shock, yes the government responded with a full‑court press of support and yes the economy is now recovering very strongly.
NATALIE BARR:
Finally before you go, we have some vision of you in parliament, it seems you had a bit of trouble opening a bottle of water, Josh. Your mate Barnaby then came to the rescue. What was going on here? Did he loosen it for you?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, he opened it for me, that’s the answer. But look no excuses, Nat, but I have got a splint on my finger, so the previous weeks I was struggling there. But no excuses, a Treasurer should be able to open a bottle of water easier than that.
NATALIE BARR:
Barnaby to the rescue, he’ll be happy about that. Thank you very much for joining us, see you next week.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Thank you Nat.