SABRA LANE:
Treasurer, good morning and welcome to AM.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Good morning Sabra.
SABRA LANE:
These figures show more than two million workers and half a million firms moved off JobKeeper by the end of December. There are still one and a half million workers relying on it, how many of those do you expect will still need some form of help by the end of March when the program ends?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well there are still some sectors like tourism, like international education, like aviation that are struggling and some regions as well. But what these numbers show is a broad based recovery in the Australian labour market, much better than we expected, even through the pandemic last year. With over two million Australians graduating from JobKeeper and over 500,000 businesses, what we are seeing is people get back to work. It’s another proof point that the economic recovery is underway, it adds to what we’ve seen in the housing market, what we’ve seen with motor vehicle sales, what we’ve seen with business and consumer confidence reaching its pre pandemic levels, and it is very encouraging.
SABRA LANE:
As you point out, some tourism, aviation and regions aren’t doing so well. Cairns, a city dependent on international tourism, is still suffering. Borders won’t lift for months, your figures show a 55 per cent fall of people needing government assistance there. That’s still thousands of workers and businesses needing help. How soon will the government unveil its support packages for specific sectors?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well the first thing to say is you’re right, there has been a significant reduction in the number of people in Cairns relying on JobKeeper. So to on the Sunshine Coast, so to on the Gold Coast and even more than 70 per cent reduction on people relying on JobKeeper in Townsville. The key to getting those people back to work in the tourism sector is to have open borders and what I heard from Alan Joyce was that he cancelled 1,500 flights into Queensland alone in the month of January. Now that was 200,000 passenger bookings, that was the money that would have been spent in Cairns or in Noosa or on Hamilton island or indeed across Brisbane or elsewhere, so we need to keep the virus under control and when it comes specific extra government support for the tourism sector, we’re considering that right now.
SABRA LANE:
JobSeeker, the special Coronavirus Supplement ends next month. The government has been considering a permanent increase to the unemployment payment. There’s a report this morning that says the government is considering boosting the payment and streamlining a whole range of supplements into one single payment. That was a recommendation to the government from the McClure review in 2015. Is that accurate?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well no surprise to you, Sabra, I’m not going to speculate on speculation. We have said consistently that we’ll make a decision and an announcement on the future of the Jobseeker payment before that elevated supplement level ends in March and that is what the government is working through right now.
SABRA LANE:
How mindful are you, in the McClure review, it suggested that the payment needed to enable recipients to have a basic, acceptable standard of living that allows them to meet their obligations, to look for work or study and to support children, to do all of that would seem to suggest a payment much higher than $40 a day.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well again, in terms of the rate and its future, we will consider that in the normal expenditure review committee context and that’s what we’re doing right now. The best thing though, I can do as the Treasurer, for people who are on JobSeeker, is to help them get back into the workforce. 90 per cent of the 1.3 million Australians who lost their jobs are now back in work. We’ve seen the unemployment rate fall to 6.6 per cent whereas Treasury were telling me at one stage that it could reach as high as 15 per cent. We are seeing some very encouraging signs across the economy, so if we can keep that momentum going, bearing in mind we’ve got tax cuts putting more than a billion dollars a month into peoples’ pockets, that we’ve brought forward infrastructure spending, that we have in place 300,000 plus skills support places as well as other incentives to boost investment, all of that is going to generate more economic activity. All of that means more jobs and all of that means people come off JobSeeker.
SABRA LANE:
Parliament is back this week. It’s going to debate the news media bargaining code to make digital giants like Google and Facebook pay for the Australian journalism that they publish. The tech giants have been pushing back, I understand that you’ve been talking with Facebook about it. Where are those talks at?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well I’ve been talking to both Facebook and Google over the course of the weekend as well as working with the Prime Minister and Minister Fletcher, and the media proprietors as well, because this is ground-breaking legislative reform. This is world-leading, there are many eyes across the world that are focused on what Australia is doing right now. We have made great progress over the course of the weekend. I think we’re very close to some very significant commercial deals and in doing so, that will transform the domestic media landscape. This legislation is important and it’s our intention to pass it through the parliament. We’ve just had a committee report that has endorsed our code and I commend the work of the ACCC and Rod Simms, who through their comprehensive work over the course of a couple of years, have produced a framework to take us forward.
SABRA LANE:
And you personally? Have you spoken with Mark Zuckerberg?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well I have, I spoke to him just yesterday and I have also been speaking as recently as this morning as well as over the weekend with Sundar from Google, the head of Google. They are very focused on what is happening here in Australia but I sense they are also trying to reach deals and that is welcome because both the media proprietors and the digital giants I think recognise that we have something that is workable here in Australia, something that we can take forward, something that can ensure a sustainable media landscape and something that will see journalism continued and journalists rewarded for generating original content.
SABRA LANE:
Treasurer, thanks for talking to AM this morning.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Thank you.