PETER STEFANOVIC:
Good to see you, thanks for joining us this morning.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good to see you.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
So according to Newspoll, you’ve passed your first test, when it comes to reaction from the Budget anyway, even 79 per cent of Labor voters backed it. Was that a relief for you or was that expected?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well this Budget is in the best interests of Australians and it will help create jobs, it’s our economic recovery plan to get Australia out of the COVID-19 recession. But the numbers that I’m focused on Pete, are the jobs numbers, because we do know that Australia faces a real challenge. We’ve been hit by an economic shock like no other, 10 per cent of the Australian workforce either lost their jobs or saw their working hours reduced to zero and that is required the measures that we announced on Budget night last Tuesday, including tax cuts for more than 11.5 million Australians, significant tax incentives to business to undertake investment and a major investment in research and development, all of which have now passed the Parliament through legislation last Friday, and that is also very good news.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
Okay. Lower support though for the wage subsidy scheme, 57 per cent of people say it should go to everyone, would you expand it?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Look, our focus and our intent is to implement it as announced, and that is an incentive to get businesses to hire people who are aged 16-35. And the reason being Pete is the experience of previous recessions is that it takes a long time for people to get from the unemployment queue into work, but an even longer time for younger people. So in the 1990s, it took a full decade to get the unemployment rate below six per cent from where it started. It took an amazing 15 years to get the unemployment rate back below from where it started for younger people. And we know that the youth unemployment rate today is twice the average for the rest of the economy and we know that young people, once they get into work and develop the skills, the experience, get the mobility to move between jobs and they’ll get a much more fulfilling life as a result.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
But what about for the people that are aged over 50, you’ve got schemes that are already in place…
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
We do.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
…for people who are aged over 50, but it’s been undersubscribed though right?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well more than 50,000 people have taken up the Restart scheme, which are for those who have been on employment benefits aged over 50 and we provide an incentive to a business of up to $10,000 to take them on. And in the Budget there is funding for the JobTrainer program, which will see 340,000 new training places, there’s 50,000 short term courses, there’s additional places across our tertiary institutions for various programs. So right across the board, we’re providing an opportunity for people to reskill and to upskill, not to forget the $4 billion for apprentices, both to keep the apprentices that are currently employed but also to provide an incentive to businesses to take on 100,000 new apprentices. Whichever way you look at this Budget, it’s designed to do one thing, create jobs.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
Just onto foreign companies with local affiliates, would you look at extending tax breaks to large companies who don’t qualify?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well again, these are issues that have been raised by the Business Council of Australia, I’ve said to the Business Council to engage in a discussion with Treasury about that, I wouldn’t want to pre-empt any of those discussions. But we’ve announced very significant and generous incentives to business to create jobs and to bring forward investment, it will cover around $200 billion of investment, around 80 per cent of non-mining investment in this country and that’s a really important initiative to help create jobs and together with the loss carry-back measure Pete, it’s estimated by Treasury that that will create around 50,000 new jobs across the economy.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
Okay. Just finally, on Victoria, Daniel Andrews appears to have dashed any hopes of an early business reopening, suggesting the next set of restrictions that will be eased will involve social interaction, does that run the risk of dating your Budget if business isn’t open sooner?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well we’ve based our Budget assumptions on what the Victorian Government has been saying about the easing of restrictions and the preconditions that need to be met by the end of the year, we are expecting that the restrictions will be lifted across borders, expect for WA which will be in April next year. But tragically, in Victoria Pete, millions and millions of Victorians have been subject to some of the harshest lockdown laws that we’ve seen anywhere in the world. Now that’s obviously had a devastating impact on the economy, up to $14 billion alone in the September quarter. But it’s also had a devastating impact on young people, people’s mental health and wellbeing and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of schoolkids have lost time in the classroom, which can’t be replaced affectively by time in the living room with online learning, it’s simply not the same. So I’m devastated by what’s happened in Victoria and where I am today in New South Wales, where life is a COVID normal, people are getting about, shopping, going to their cafes, going to work and in New South Wales, they had more cases than Victoria last week at one stage and they’ve also had numerous days where they had more than 10 cases. Yet in Victoria, while the numbers are coming down, Daniel Andrews keeps turning the screws and that is really unfortunate. I think people are fed up and I think people want to hear about the lifting of the restrictions, of course in a COVID safe way, but they shouldn’t be kept being strung along like they have been. I think it’s time that Daniel Andrews really got on with it, lifted the restrictions and allowed Victorians to get back to a COVID safe normal life.
PETER STEFANOVIC:
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, appreciate your time as always. Thanks for joining us.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Thank you.