NEIL BREEN:
Josh Frydenberg joins me on the line. Good morning, Treasurer.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good morning, Neil. Nice to be with you and your listeners.
NEIL BREEN:
We’ve talked about this, the recovery, the light at the end of the COVID tunnel and one day we’ll have to pay for it in the long term, but at least people are in work.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, it has been a dark tunnel and the last two years has been really difficult for families and particularly for small businesses as well. But the signs are very positive about where the recovery is heading and how the economy is strengthening. As you say, 350,000 new jobs created since September. 1.2 million people have come off those COVID disaster payments in the lockdown states and they have gone into work as opposed to welfare as the number of people on income support has come down. And we are seeing restrictions eased. It will be good news when Queensland borders open up and we see more international travel. That will be good for the tourism industry, that will be good for accommodation, for hospitality, for aviation and obviously the international students and the skilled workers coming back too, as the Prime Minister has announced, will also be very helpful for the economy.
NEIL BREEN:
Underemployment, is that still an issue?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, certainly there are people who would like more hours of work, but the good news is that the headline unemployment rate, even after this first recession in nearly 30 years, is lower than when we came to government. That’s quite a remarkable statistic, Neil. Many of your listeners will remember the experience in Australia of the 1980s and the 1990s of those recessions. It took eight to 10 years for the unemployment rate to recover to where it was before those recessions. This time around we’ve done it in just over a year. And the Reserve Bank has forecast that next year’s economic growth will be a lot higher than they were originally thinking at 5.5 per cent, and actually the unemployment rate will get a four in it and be sustained at that level for the first time effectively since the 1970s. So it’s quite a remarkable story for Australia through this pandemic. We’ve got one of the strongest recoveries in the world. We’ve got one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and we’ve got one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.
NEIL BREEN:
Despite all this, despite all the work that the Coalition has done and keeping the country afloat and all of those things, there’s still unrest in your ranks. It was a dramatic week this week. We saw what Matt Canavan did, Gerard Rennick, the other Queensland Senator did and they sided with Pauline Hanson. And then we had Bridget Archer yesterday, another Coalition MP, crossing the floor and all of these issues are melding together. You’ve got the Religious Discrimination Bill, you’ve got the federal form of ICAC, and agitation in the party. It’s hard to sell a front of unity to the public when that’s going on, Josh Frydenberg.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, Neil, the last couple of weeks of any parliamentary year, let alone one where we’ve been through a pandemic, always seem to be pretty bumpy. That being said, we know what the job is ahead of us. There’s going to be an election next year. We’ve got a mid‑year economic update to present in December and we are progressing important pieces of legislation like this Religious Discrimination Bill, which will protect people of faith from discrimination, just as people are protected from age discrimination or disability discrimination or sex discrimination. The work we’re doing with the economy to, for example, provide incentives for start‑up companies to provide employee share ownership schemes, we’ve just legislated those amendments. We’ve passed through the house and, hopefully through the Senate, important legislation on litigation funding so that consumers will benefit and get more money and the lawyers get less, effectively. I mean, there’s a lot of these practical reforms that may not be headline news, but we’re just getting on with the job. And, obviously, the Prime Minister also announced yesterday the deployment of Defence Force personnel and Federal Police to the Solomon Islands to help calm the unrest there. So we’ve got big issues to deal with, with respect to the economy, with respect to national security and, hopefully, the Australian people, come next year, will focus on those outcomes as the ones they vote on at the ballot box.
NEIL BREEN:
Yeah, but it doesn’t help when you’ve got Gerard Rennick posting all that weird stuff to his Facebook page. He obviously doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. He’s got masters degrees in all sorts of things but he’s not showing many of those smarts in Parliament. Matt Canavan is in The Courier Mail today writing about vaccinations aren’t working in Belgium and all these countries because they’re being plunged back into lockdowns, but he’s misusing a lot of the vaccination figures. How are you going to rein them in?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, let me state unequivocally for you and your listeners, vaccinations work. They’re our defence against the virus. They’re the reason why the economy has been able to open up safely in the way that it is. And for Australia to have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world is a real tribute to Australian’s everywhere. I mean, we’re tracking above 90 per cent vaccination rates. That’s quite an incredible achievement and no‑one wants to go backwards, as we saw last year with the extensive lockdowns. Everyone knows what the cost is in both economic terms, but also in people’s wellbeing. I mean, Patrick McGorry has spoken about the shadow pandemic, the mental health impacts of lockdowns. It’s so important that people do get the vaccine if they’re eligible to do so because it is our first line of defence against COVID.
NEIL BREEN:
Now, we’re going to have a bit of fun. We’ve got a bit of Friday fun.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Always. Always Friday fun.
NEIL BREEN:
We saw vision of you in Parliament, you couldn’t open a water bottle because you’ve injured your finger. And then you had to get the country man, the Deputy Prime Minister with his big tough country hands, to open the water bottle for you. How did you bust your finger?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, I have to confess it was pulling the sheets back on the bed, some manual labour.
NEIL BREEN:
And you wanted to be a tennis pro. How soft are you?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Come on, Neil, nimble fingers, nimble fingers. I was there one night at home and I was trying to pull the sheets back on the bed and I looked at my wife and said “Oh, shit” and I felt the bloody pain there and I rushed off to see a doctor and he’s put the finger in a splint and it’s got to be on for six weeks and potentially even hand surgery. So it’s not much fun, but that is no excuse for not being able to open a water bottle. I bet you if I’d used my teeth it would have been more of a story though.
NEIL BREEN:
It would have been. Yes, it would have been. It would have been like Tony Abbott eating the onion from the outside. We’re going to put it on 4BC.com.au, the video, so people can have a laugh. Thanks for your time Josh Frydenberg. Have a good weekend.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
You too, Neil. All the best.